Part of the house is built of stone and part
half-timber, but a coat of thin plaster covers the stonework and makes
it conform with the rest. To plaster over stone-work is a somewhat
daring act, and is not architecturally correct, but the appearance of
the house is altogether pleasing.
The Elizabethan and Jacobean builder increased the height of his
house, sometimes causing it to have three storeys, besides rooms in
attics beneath the gabled roof. He also loved windows. "Light, more
light," was his continued cry. Hence there is often an excess of
windows, and Lord Bacon complained that there was no comfortable place
to be found in these houses, "in summer by reason of the heat, or in
winter by reason of the cold." It was a sore burden to many a
house-owner when Charles II imposed the iniquitous window-tax, and so
heavily did this fall upon the owners of some Elizabethan houses that
the poorer ones were driven to the necessity of walling up some of the
windows which their ancestors had provided with such prodigality. You
will often see to this day bricked-up windows in many an old
farm-house. Not every one was so cunning as the parish clerk of
Bradford-on-Avon, Orpin, who took out the window-frames from his
interesting little house near the church and inserted numerous small
single-paned windows which escaped the tax.
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