CHAPTER III 



CHILDHOOD AT COATE FARM 



CoATE Farm is a plain, oblong, slated, brick house of two 

 stories, including the attics, attached on the east side to 

 the small, steep-roofed, and still thatched remnant of an 

 older house. In front, one sitting-room downstairs has a 

 bay-window and window-seat. A large pear-tree covers 

 the western end of the house, and still touches, as in 

 Jefferies' day, the attic window that looks to Swindon. 

 The bedrooms, one of them in the old part under the 

 thatch, are reached by irregular passages and steps, and 

 the staircase is narrow and dark. At the top are two 

 long low attics, one of them the cheese-room where Jef- 

 feries read and Amaryllis painted, when its window was 

 latticed, but not glazed. Beside the bedroom, there is 

 a cellar, and a kitchen with open fireplace and brewing 

 copper, all under the thatch ; and outside that the dairy, 

 at right angles to the house. Thatched outbuildings are 

 close by, under elms, to the east. The front garden, 

 screened by wall and pollard-limes, has several trees — 

 clipped yew, French cherry, plum, apple, and pear ; and 

 some ill-grown plums lean against the wall, whence 

 Amaryllis could easily look down on to the sunken road. 

 In the back garden, also, are fruit-trees, together with 

 mulberry, copper beech, and weeping ash. 



Powdered by motor-cars, and deprived of most of its 

 thatch, it is a dull, unnoticeable house, the greater part of 

 it obviously belonging to about the year 1820, when 

 John Jefferies built all but what is still thatched. The 



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