14 Restoration and the Preservation of Ancient Buildings. 



he thought heavy, and so had them 1 carved into flowers like dahlias. 

 I think that, whether the original design was entirely satisfactory 

 to the eye or not, it lost in value by the alteration. 



i 



The present owner, my host on the present occasion, prefers that I 

 his house should be called " The Hall." The Hall family, no ! 

 doubt, derived their name from a formerly existing hall, in 

 Bradford, which may very probably have stood on the same spot, 

 but is there any evidence that the present house was ever, until the || 

 present time, called the Hall ? The interest of the building is, I 

 however, independent of its name. 



There is an interesting house, of the fifteenth century, in the [I 

 short street called the Shambles, which, I am happy to see, still I 

 remains uninjured. It has formerly had small projecting oriels. 

 To the best of my recollection, I once saw a house at Keevil, a little 

 out of the village, retaining such an oriel of the fifteenth century. 



I have not heard that the hand of any restorer has, as yet, touched 

 Westwood, which we are to see to-morrow, where the Church has 

 a very fine late tower, which I suppose may be of the time of Henry 

 the Eighth, and where I remember a beautiful wooden ceiling, at 

 the end of one of the aisles, apparently of the same date. The 

 manor-house also is very interesting and contains some curious 

 plaster work. 



Our excursion, on Thursday next, must take us past a very in- 

 teresting old house, close to the road from Melksham to Seend, 



1 Mr. John Moulton called my attention, by letter, since the meeting, to an 

 apparent inaccuracy in my reference to this fireplace, which is the one in the 

 dining-room, viz., that I was reported as having said that all the bosses were \ 

 altered by the late Mr. Moulton into dahlias. It was not my intention to be so 

 understood, and it will be seen that such a report must have gone beyond what 

 I said. Mr. Moulton added that one of the bosses only is intended as a dahlia, \ 

 the others being roses of the orthodox design, and that his father told him that » 

 the introduction of the dahlia was by way of a joke in order to puzzle architects I 

 and others. That agrees with my recollection of what the late Mr. Moulton told ; 

 me, the point being, I believe, that the dahlia was not introduced into England ■ \ 

 until a later date than that of the building of the house. I was writing simply . j 

 from my recollection of a conversation, at one short interview, years ago. My i ! 

 impression was that one or more of the bosses, but certainly not all, had been ! r 

 carved into dahlias. What flowers the others had been carved into I did not J 

 recollect. 



