Picturesque English Cottages and 1 heir Doorway Gardens 
our scenery. 1 here is no vain pretension 
about them. 1 hey are not like some mod¬ 
ern villa which masquerades as a castle and 
calls itself “ Huntingdon Towers,” or “Cas- 
tlethorpe,” or ‘‘Dovecote Abbey.” There is 
nothing of that about an old English cot¬ 
tage. 
The style of building is traditional, handed 
down from father to son, and often peculiar 
to a district. And yet there is no monotony, 
The builders made use of the materials 
which Nature afforded. Hence the style of 
cottage architecture peculiar to a district de¬ 
pended on its geology. We will try to dis¬ 
cover the peculiarities of the geological forma¬ 
tions which produce these divergent styles. 
First, there is a broad band of good oolite 
building stone, which extends from Somerset, 
running through Gloucestershire and Wilts, 
Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, Lincoln, to 
AN OLD HOUSE AT BROADWAY 
no dreary sameness. Each man infuses his 
own individuality into his work. Jf you walk 
down any village street, you will see that no 
cottage is exactly the same as its neighbor. 
They wrought well and worthily who thus 
could build. While not departing from the 
traditional style bequeathed to them by their 
forefathers, they thought out improvements 
here, or more picturesque effects there, using 
fertile resource that made the best of its oppor¬ 
tunities, and so got the best results. 
the dales of Yorkshire. Along its course 
can be seen many English architectural tri¬ 
umphs, tine church towers and spires, some 
of our grandest cathedrals, such as Salisbury, 
Wells, Lincoln and Southwell, and beautiful 
stone cottages, some examples of which we 
have already inspected. 
East of this line is East Anglia, where there 
is no good building stone. Flint is found in 
abundance, and is used for walling, but mud 
cottages are very common. Brick is the pnn- 
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