54 A NORTH-COUNTRY HALL 



progress through the northern counties, spent liberally 

 on Elizabethan architects, to whom we owe the spacious 

 hall, the drawing-room with its noble mantelpiece of 

 carved oak, the quaint library with still richer oak 

 carving, and the numerous bedrooms above, which to 

 wander among is occupation for a long rainy afternoon. 

 There prevailed in those days a practice, much to be 

 commended to modern builders (unless they are 

 ashamed of their work), of carving in each room the 

 initials of him who caused it to be built or decorated, 

 with the date. Thus the mantelpieces in all these 

 rooms are inscribed with different years from 1586 to 

 1617, while heralds and genealogists delight in collat- 

 ing the chronology from the escutcheons embossed 

 and painted on the plaster cornice dividing panelled 

 wall from fretted ceiling, or inserted in the stained 

 glass of the lattices. 



Except a few bedrooms over the kitchen and offices, 

 and a well- conceived tower over the garden front, there 

 has been no interference with the Elizabethan work. 

 Elizabethan, that is, with traces of northern influence ; 

 for the chimney stacks, built of small flakes of lime- 

 stone, climb the skies in the cylindrical form peculiar 

 to the district. The interior is wonderfully rich in old 

 oak. The rooms are panelled throughout; there is 

 abundance of carving, exquisitely delicate and rich, 

 although some of the walls, notably those of the dining- 

 room at the west end of the hall, were spread with 

 stamped and highly coloured Spanish leather by Sir 

 James Bellingham in the seventeenth century. This 



