House and Garden 
quaintness; and often when a landlord has 
built a new room or a new cottage with addi¬ 
tional accommodation, the new room is con¬ 
verted into a parlor, or best room, only 
to be opened on special occasions, or let to a 
lodger. 
Our tour of inspection of the old cottages 
of England is drawing to a close, but I must 
not omit to mention the fact that many of 
these rural homes are historically famous. 
Great men, poets, painters, bishops, heroes 
of the sword and the pen, have been born or 
lived in cottages, which become places of 
pilgrimage for lovers of history. Space for¬ 
bids that I should mention in detail these 
shrines of hero-worshippers. There is Mary 
Arden’s cottage at Wilmcote, where every 
lover of Shakespeare longs to go; the poet’s 
birthplace whence soundeth forth the mighti¬ 
est voice in modern literature, and the cottage 
of his bride, Anne Hathaway. Near where 
I am writing stands the cottage home of the 
distinguished authoress of “Our Village,” 
which attracts many votaries. Pope’s cot¬ 
tage is also nigh at hand, now converted into 
a mansion; in his time 
“ A little house with trees arow 
And, like his master, very low.” 
Antiquarians and naturalists will venerate 
Sutton Barn, Borden, Kent, the birthplace 
of the learned Dr. Plot (1641-1696), the 
keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, at Oxford, 
historiographer of King James II., and author 
of the “Natural History of Oxfordshire.” 
The cottage is at least as old as the early 
part of the sixteenth century. 
A peculiar interest is attached to the cot¬ 
tage at Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, 
where Milton lived, “the pretty box,” whither 
he retired when the Great Plague was devas¬ 
tating London and filling the great charnel- 
pit nigh his house at Artillery Walk, Bunhill 
Fields, with ghastly loads. It is a typical 
Buckinghamshire cottage, gabled, oak-tim¬ 
bered and vine-clad. American admirers 
once entertained the idea of pulling it down 
and re-erecting it in the United States. Per¬ 
haps I may be forgiven for expressing my 
MARY Arden’s COTTAGE, WILMCOTE 
277 
