274 BRITISH RURAL LIFE AND LABOUR. 



upon the walls. At Nether Avon the landlord, a well- 

 known man and a Member of Parliament, had caused 

 to be erected a number of excellent dwellings, each con- 

 taining four or five rooms a " living " room, a scullery, 

 and three bedrooms. There was no complaint, we 

 found, by the occupiers of want of accommodation or 

 of any kind of discomfort ; and on going into the matter 

 of the other and older cottages the people told us that 

 even they had been " tackled up," as they put it, and 

 made at least more comfortable if not more roomy. 

 From other districts in the same county came what, 

 on the whole, were favourable signs of improvement. 

 A Wiltshire clergyman wrote to us : 



" In sanitary matters I doubt whether the county be 

 quite up to it certainly is not ahead of the factory dis- 

 tricts of the north. On some noblemen's estates notably 

 that of the Marquis of Bath the cottages and farmhouses 

 will compare favourably for health and neatness, and 

 perhaps for convenience, with the working men's houses 

 of Sir Titus Salt of Saltaire. The same may be said of the 

 estates of the late Mr. C. P. Phipps of Chalcote." 



We are tempted here although at first intending to 

 exclude repetitions of the evil kind of things already 

 recorded to quote the same clergyman's candid report 

 of the still existent " bad " dwellings, especially as 

 there is some appreciable humour in his concluding 

 sentences. His letter went on : 



" Yet in many places the cottages of the peasantry are 

 wretched ill-drained, ill-roofed, and ill-ventilated. The 

 wind comes in at the doors of many, not by crevices, but 

 by apertures through which the hand can be thrust. The 

 bedroom windows, many of them, will not open at all, and 

 there is no fireplace or chimney, and no means of ventilation 

 except the door. The water used for drinking and cooking 

 is drawn, in many cases, from stagnant ponds, or from 

 streams polluted by sewage, or by factory dye-houses. This 

 is the case, for instance, at Hey wood and Hawksridge, two 

 villages with 500 inhabitants, of which I have the charge 

 at present. In a few cottages only one of the landlords 

 provides filters. While the borough town of Westbury itself, 

 which is lit up with gas, by subscription, is only surface- 

 drained, and while clear spring water is very sparingly laid 



