House and Garden 
Nor are they so picturesque, as the unevenness 
of the laying of the tiles in former days and 
their varied hues, produce a peculiar and 
subtle charm. There is a great variety in 
old ridge-tiling, but the humbler abodes 
usually have simple bent tiles or the plain 
half-round as a finish to the roof. 
In a previous article, I have told of other 
materials used as a covering for our cottage 
homes. The old cottages at Lingfield, Sur¬ 
rey, and the house at Broomham, Sussex, 
are good examples of tiling, the gable end 
being especially picturesque. The cottage 
at Herne Bay, Kent, is an excellent specimen 
of weather-boarding. We will look up at 
the gables of an old house, and see the barge- 
boards that often adorn them. Even poorer 
houses have these, and they are elaborately 
carved or moulded. Coventry possesses 
many. Kent has also some good examples, 
and, in fact, all counties where timber was 
once plentiful. And they add a charming effect 
to the houses. The style of the carving in¬ 
dicates their age. Thus the earliest forms 
reveal bargeboards with the edges cut into 
cusps. In the sixteenth century the boards 
are pierced with tracery, in the form of tre¬ 
foils or quatrefoils; and in the Jacobean 
period the ends of the gables at the eaves 
have pendants, a finial adorns the ridge, and 
the perforated designs are more fantastic and 
correspond to the details of the well-known 
Jacobean carving. In old houses the barge- 
boards project about a foot from the surface 
of the wall. In the eighteenth century, when 
weather-tiling was introduced, the distances 
between the wall and the bargeboards was 
diminished, and ultimately they were placed 
flush with it; elaborately carved boards were 
discarded, and the ends of the gable moulded. 
The chimney shafts are a very important 
feature and form one of the chief external 
A COTTAGE ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF FORLOCK 
177 
