PICTURESQUE ENGLISH COTTAGES AND THEIR 
DOORWAY GARDENS 
By P. H. Ditchfield, M.A., F.S.A., F.R.H.S. 
I 
W E live in a world of change. Even in 
the sleepy hollows of rural England 
the pulse of life beats faster than of yore, 
and new times, new manners, leave their 
mark upon our social life. “Ther’ sims to 
be alius summat a-fresh,” murmurs an old 
Berkshire dame. In no way is this change 
more manifest than in the intrusion of mod¬ 
ern buildings into our villages, and the de¬ 
struction ot the beautiful old cottages which 
form the most attractive feature of English 
rural scenery. 
Already many a lovely dell and rustic 
paradise are disfigured by monotonous rows 
of hideous cottages, familiar to the denizens 
of overgrown towns, where workmen congre¬ 
gate—each house its neighbor’s twin, flush 
with the street, and devoid of anything be¬ 
yond bare utility. It is true such alien 
homesteads in the country have a garden, 
which their town brethren lack ; but see the 
hideous, bare-ficed ugliness of these prod¬ 
ucts of modern civilization—the crude tints 
of the bare brick walls, the slate roofs, the 
doors and windows supplied by some cheap 
wood company by the thousand, each one 
like its neighbor; the little stunted chimney, 
that juts out from the roof; and contrast 
this with the charming old English thatched 
and weather-beaten dwellings, many examples 
of which we hope to visit together and mark 
their graces and perfections. 
A new law should be enacted for the sup¬ 
pression of such dwellings, which are as dis¬ 
agreeable to live in as to look at, and the 
punishment for the offending builder should 
be no less than that of being hanged from 
his own roof-beam, who thus could spoil 
God’s beautiful earth with such detestable 
architectural enormities. They are sore 
places to live in, these modern cheap cot¬ 
tages. The jerry-builder makes the walls so 
thin that the cold winds of winter seem to 
blow through them. The hot sun of sum¬ 
mer remorselessly beats down upon the 
slate roofs, and makes the upper rooms 
almost unbearable; whereas a thatched roof 
will keep you cool in summer and warm in 
winter, and the old cottage walls are sturdy 
and strong like our rustic laborers, and can 
defy the keen blasts of winter. Such a cot¬ 
tage you will see on the road from Mine- 
head to Porlock, with its graceful thatch and 
tiled porch and its background of lovely 
trees. 
The destruction of old cottages began 
years ago in the days of the old poor laws, 
when each parish managed its own affairs, 
and there were no U nions and District 
Councils and County Councils. In order to 
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