House and Garden 
always blackened, and there we find elaborate 
patterns in the panels with diapering and 
cusping. The curved braces were cut out 
of crooked boughs and limbs of trees, and 
sometimes straight struts are used. 
Thus our old timber-framed houses were 
constructed, which add such beauty to our 
English landscape and form such a charac¬ 
teristic feature of our scenery. They are 
the eloquent though silent witnesses to the 
skill and craftsmanship of our village ances- 
buildings. ’ 'There is a cottage at Lyme 
Regis where this arrangement is seen, and 
in Kent there are numerous instances of this 
pleasing variety. The gray oak and the 
red brick harmonize well together. Flint 
and stones in checkered squares are not 
uncommon in the latter county. 
The appearance of our cottages has been 
much altered since they left the hands of 
the sixteenth century craftsman. One pecu¬ 
liarity of the oak timbers is that they often 
AN OLD HOUSE AND GARDEN NEAR GUILFORD 
tors. It behooves those who have the care 
of them to treat them with a gentle hand 
and tender regard, and not to sweep them 
away when a little judicious restoration 
would keep them strong and serviceable as 
of yore. 
There are many examples of bricks being 
placed in the divisions between the timbers, 
and these bricks are sometimes arranged in 
herring-bone fashion, like the stones of Saxon 
shrink. Hence the joints came apart, and 
being exposed to the weather became decayed. 
In consequence of this the buildings settled, 
and new methods had to be devised in order 
to make them weatherproof. The villagers 
therefore adopted two or three means in 
order to attain this end. They plastered 
the whole surface of the walls on the outside, 
5 Herring-bone work was formerly considered a characteristic of 
Saxon architecture, but it can be seen also in Norman walls. 
