COTTAGES AND FARMS 5 



Not unfrequently plain weather-tiling was repaired Avith tiles 

 of a scale or diamond pattern, or they may possibly have been 

 originally hung together, just as they came. This happy-go- 

 lucky way of using local material often has a good effect, as 

 may be seen in the cottage at Kirdford and the one at Tilt- 

 ham's Green. It is a matter for regret when, as is so often 

 done now in repairing old cottage roofs or even building new 

 ones, ridge tiles are used in place of the proper hip-tile. There 

 is a special charm about the fine old saddle-shaped, locally- 

 made hip-tiles, with their saw-edged profile telling well 

 against the sky, just as there is a charm, and the satisfying 

 conviction of a thing being exactly right, about all the 

 building details that are of local tradition and form the 

 local style. 



Many of the older chimneys have handsome heads of a 

 pattern whose general type is nearly always the same. They 

 were built of thinner bricks than those of the present stan- 

 dard size, so that the ornament formed by the projecting courses 

 had a certain delicacy. This shows very plainly when an old 

 pattern of chimney is copied in the modern brick (whose 

 height is 2i inches, whereas the old brick was 2 inches); the 

 whole thing is coarsened and spoilt. Some of the older 

 chimneys, instead of a pot on the top to help the draught or 

 cure smoking, have an arrangement of tiles that the local 

 bricklayer calls a ' bonnet.' 



Often, in speaking of these country buildings, I have been 

 asked what I mean or understand by the style of the country. 

 I can only explain it thus. The local tradition in building 

 is the crystallisation of local need, material and ingenuity. 

 When the result is so perfect, that is to say, when the adapta- 

 tion of means to ends is so satisfactory that it has held good 



