COUNTY CONSERVATORS.
THE Times of October 13th describes a remarkable in- stance of public spirit in the preservation of an ancient house at Norwich called the " Strangers' Hall." The origin of the name is uncertain, as it is not known to have been inhabited by the Flemings or Walloons, who were anciently known there as the " Strangers " ; but it is a fine example of a merchant's house of the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries. To show what has been preserved for the future citizens of one of the most interesting towns in England, we may condense part of the Times's description. The house has been standing for five hundred years, and its fabric shows in a great degree the changes which the lapse of time has wrought in manners and customs. T his, we may remark. is part of the modern value of most of the ancient objects and buildings which we would see preserved in the counties. Thus under the house are cellars and crypts of the kind which are known to have been commonly made under the timber-built houses of the fourteenth century. It is believed that they were the cellars of the house of Roger Herdegrey, burgess in Parliament for Norwich in 1358, and bailiff of Norwich two years later, as his house stood on this spot. The kitchen and butteries probably belong to this period, while the hall, which has a groined entrance porch, oriel window, and fine roof, seems to have been built at the end of the fifteenth century. A screen in the hall was painted light red, so that part of the actual colour scheme remains. This great hull was, as was usual at the time, the main dwelling-room for the whole household, and apparently some of them must have slept there, for the only other room besides the kitchen and buttery was a parlour, which had possibly a bedroom over it, until in the seventeenth century a Mayor of Norwich built other rooms and a beautiful Jacobean staircase and landing. The house was inhabited later by Sir Joseph Paine, a friend of Sir Thomas Browne. Further alterations, in the Georgian style, were made when the house was converted into the " Judges' lodgings."
All this five hundred years of history in the concrete was falling into decay when Mr. Leonard Bolingbroke purchased the house, repaired it, and opened it to the public, at a small fee to make the building self-supporting. Since then he has collected from the locality ancient furniture, such as would have been in use at the different periods of the additions to the house, together with the minor utensils for lighting, cooking, dining, and domestic work ; and has hung the walls with etchings by the local artists, such as old Crome, Cotman, and Daniell.
The value of such a house and contents is immensely enhanced by its setting and surroundings, and by the light it throws and the stimulus it confers on the study of history. But our counties are full of a wonderful series of buildings and other objects, of which it cannot be expected that purchasers like Mr. Bolingbroke can be found, even if they knew of the existence of the buildings in question. They are especially numerous in some of what are sometimes called the " backward " counties, by which is really meant those furthest from London or the great manufacturing districts, and where in consequence the old order has been less disturbed. We could name a dozen classes of such objects, nearly always beautiful in themselves, standing illustrations of the social life of other days, yet linked up with our own, often still in use, but more frequently in danger of decay from mere want of care. Among them are the ancient bridges, old conduits and stone cisterns (like that removed from Carfax, which was fortunately preserved in Nuneham Park), dovecotes of various patterns, granaries, monks' barns, fountains and well-heads, village crosses, town balls, many of which are as small and quaint as others are large and imposing, as, for instance, that said to be from Inigo Jones's designs at Abingdon ; almshouses, such as God's House at Ewelme ; schools, like the beautiful old Renaissance- fronted building at Ashbourne in Derbyshire; ancient and typical cottages, wayside shrines, chapels, and ancient town houses of timber or other material characteristic of the district. The large crenellated houses and buildings are generally preserved, but by no means always. We could point to numbers falling into decay, or in danger of being spoiled by incongruous repair or addition.
Such objects as those briefly set down above, when not of sufficient importance to engage the attention of the National Trust, are very suitable for the protection of local bodies of the same character. A bridge or a barn, a dovecote or small manor house, may be typical of a style of building peculiar to the county, or illustrative of some great past industry, as, for instance, the high timber-framed gateways under the gables of some of the old houses in Suffolk towns, where the wood-wains passed through to the yards behind. Sometimes the very bodies which should be the first to preserve these relics are eager to destroy them. The atrocious iron latticed bridge which the Oxford- shire County Council made it a matter of personal amour propre to set over their portion of the Thames at Sonning is an example in point, in which what is practically a continua- tion of one of the finest old brick bridges in England is carried on by what might be just suitable on a canal in the Black Country. Lovers of Thames antiquities will tremble to think that the same body could probably, and may in time, pull down Sir John Golafre's fifteenth-century " New Bridge " at Fyfield, and give it an up-to-date substitute in blue brick. Also there is another class of offenders, who, as was wittily said by one of our most eminent architects, when some distinguished man dies immediately ask themselves the question, " What can we destroy in his memory ? " The last example of this misdirected energy was the removal of an old window in Exeter Cathedral to put in a new one in honour of Archbishop Temple.
But the general trend of local thought and county feeling is most strongly in favour of preserving the relics of the past. These objects are the natural "illustrations" of the story of England in the different shires. As the village church is the village Westminster Abbey, so the other ancient buildings are the memorials of the lives of those who ate 'waled there century after century. Two main difficulties stand at present in the way of their preservation, one being that the nature, place, and particular interest of these buildings and objects are often very imperfectly known, their importance being not often appreciated by the owners. The other is that there is no sort of appeal when it is proposed to destroy them, and no local body the opinions of which could be invited, and which would command respect. A building may be of great importance, let us say, in the history of local art. To take a case in point. A fourteenth-century building may exist only partly finished on the original design, which is rich and good. Something has stopped the building, and what later work there is is in a totally different style, completed after a great lapse of time, and making quite a fresh standard of art and taste. The key to this is that the Black Death fell so heavily on that district that the population was almost ex- terminated, the work of building stopped, and in the gradual and slow recovery there was no money or energy to do more until the time when the different type of work was evolved. If it were proposed to destroy this to conform to some passing view as to what the building ought to be, the building as an historical document would be lost. It cannot be believed that had there existed a body of weight to whose verdict such questions as the destruction of the great tithe barn at Ely, and only the other day at Peterborough, could have been referred, those regrettable activities would have been allowed full play without an effort to save them.
The remedy seems to be that the County Councils should each chose a Committee, to bear the name of " County Conservators" or -some analogous titlei with power to elect on to -their
body other members who are experts in local history and antiquities, or distinguished for general acquaintance with the history of architecture and the decorative arts. This body should be entitled to compile at their convenience lists of buildings and objects worthy of preservation, and invite communications on the subject. But their chief duty should be to act as a Court of Reference as to whether objects which it was proposed to destroy were really worth preserving, giving their reasons in case they did think so, and so strengthening any public effort which might be made to give effect to their views. In some cases they might even be permitted to recommend that county funds should be forth- coming to aid in the repair or preservation of the buildings, an object to which those in control of such funds have fre- quently not shown themselves indisposed to contribute. It might possibly also be wise to extend the scope of their interests to natural objects in danger of defacement or destruction. But if once the County Conservators were established, their influence, if it were usefully employed, would certainly be enlarged later.
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