Woodside

“ Woodside, until it was opened as a residence section, was a purely farming region whose inhabitants went elsewhere for their groceries and religion, and as the average farmer thinks more of making hay than history, the movement must necessarily be somewhat slow. ”

“ Hine: I have interviewed very many who had to do with the early days of Woodside, without reference as to whether they were personal friends or not, and have heard but one opinion expressed, and universally expressed, in a manner too sincere to admit of any doubt. Each one recalls the man with a vividness and interest that time seemingly cannot dull, and each impression is but a repetition in one form or another of a great heart and a pure, clean minded man. ”

“ Milly was as large as a man and as strong as two.
PIONEERING IN WOODSIDE. In these crude times many were the emergencies that arose, and much ingenuity was called into play to meet them, for between the Erie Railroad and that farce known as the street car, Woodside was almost as isolated as an island in mid ocean. ”

“ There is no plastering, and the joists that support the upper floors are thick and strong and as substantial as when put in, more than a hundred years ago.”
THE BRITISH ON WOODSIDE SOIL. “While the British were encamped on this side of Second river, near the steel works, the grandfather of Mr. Tompkins, who was a scout in the American Army and noted as an athlete, was reconnoitering, with four companions, on the old Belleville road. ”

“ These with other discomforts made life in Woodside interesting and will serve to show the situation during the first year. We were without the bread of life—often short of the bread that perisheth.
As there were no sidewalks the middle of the road was used as a foot path by those too early for the next car. “One day”, writes Mr. Swinnerton, “in the middle of the road, and in the spring of 1867, I met and was introduced to Mr. Hine. After the usual civilities Mr. Hine declared his purpose to start a Sunday school just as soon as he had moved into the settlement. ”

“ Tompkins owned property around the Boiling Spring, which has been a boundary mark from time immemorial and one of the corners of Woodside, and he was the first to suggest a park in that region, offering to give his land if the city would purchase more and make the whole into a public park, and while his offer was not taken, there is little doubt but that he helped to start the agitation which resulted in the present system of breathing places for the people.
JOHN F. DRYDEN. The history of the man who has made a success of this life is always interesting. ”

“ Those traveling further north must do so on foot after descending the bluff by a steep flight of steps and crossing the river on a rickety foot bridge of logs.”
THE WOODSIDE OF 1867. “The early settlers found a country beautiful to behold, but with the usual discomforts of a new place. There were no stores, when short of provisions neighbor must forage on neighbor; there were no schools, Sunday or secular; there were no churches, there were no Sunday horse cars—ride to church we could not. ”

“ Two or three informal meetings were held in a small carpenter shop standing in Mr. Swinnerton’s yard, on the northeast corner of Elwood and Lincoln avenues (this was the first Morrison & Briggs shop) . Here Woodside was given its present name.
So far as can now be recalled the Town Committeemen were General Cumming, for the River road; Mr. Hine, for Washington avenue; either Mr. Phillips or Mr. Faitoute, for Lincoln avenue; Charles Akers, for the Bloomfield road; “a fine, old Irish gentleman for Soho”, and Joseph Dowling for the cross street. James S. Gamble was Treasurer. ”

“ Where shadows on clover heads fall;
And the wind with leaf-tipped fingers,
Is playing in concert with all."
Eliza Cook.
Now grandpapa's house, Woodside, stood on the side of a wood; in fact there was only a grassy road between the gates and the wood itself.
Such a wood! with large old elms and oaks and other trees. In the more open spaces were trees and bushes of hawthorn, now completely covered with white blossom, the pretty May-bloom. There too grew prim [Pg 18] roses, violets, wild hyacinths, besides a long list of other wild flowers, ferns, and feathery green moss. ”

“ It would be but a humble post indeed to open the park gates to them good people, a very decent family too, I mean to say nothing disrespectful, but Woodlands, bless your heart, Woodlands is one of the principalest houses in the whole countryside. Do you see that beautiful great house standing on the height there, with the broad terrace and the pleasure-grounds sloping down to the river, and them grand woods on each side, shutting out the summer’s sun and the winter’s blasts?—that’s Woodlands, and it’s not every day you will see its like ”

“ Very many years have passed since the old tower was used, and since the park in which it stands was converted into a farm.
The Woodlands estate, on the broad acres belonging to the Earl of Shaftesbury, is a sandy, heathy district of furze and pine-trees, with a conspicuous ridge in the midst, shaped in a semicircle and crested with those sombre trees. Here is Shag Heath and the cultivated oasis called “The Island” where on July 8th, 1685, the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth was captured, hiding amid the bracken and undergrowth, beneath an ash-tree. ”

“ Such was blithe Letty—simple, yet shrewd, loving and light-hearted, the happy embodiment of ardent and out-blossoming womanhood.
But Woodburn Grange was a spot made for a happy home, for substantial ease and abundance, not for grandeur. There was everything there which enabled its possessors to enjoy the country. A handsome income; all the rural luxuries of life; horses, an open, but not a close carriage, a boat on the charming river below, hearts ready to love good and intelligent neighbours, and such neighbours to love. ”

“ All upon the north side of Woodbine was devoted to the practical, utilitarian needs of the place, all upon its southern to its pleasures and luxuries, for in the buildings circling away from the south end were the spacious kitchens, dairy, smoke house, laundry and other buildings necessary to the domestic economy of the household. None of these buildings touched directly upon the main house, but were connected with it by a roofed-over colonnade upon which the woodbine ran riot, as it did upon all the detached buildings, producing an effect charming beyond description. ”

“ The neighbourhood of Woodhall combines lands of a wild unreclaimed nature, such as the Ostler Ground and other moorlands, in the parishes of Thornton, Martin, Roughton, Kirkby and Tattershall, and closely contiguous, and even mixed up with these, lands which are in an advanced state of cultivation. I have already mentioned a tract of waste, boggy ground, lying between the Tower on the Moor and Bracken Wood, formerly the haunt of wild fowl, and still called “The Bogs Neuk.” ”

“ We had talked of peril merrily together, as men loitering in a tavern talk easily of the wars. But now in the night, under the spell of the booming water, the atmosphere of responsibility returned.
Ward was depending upon me and the two beside me. Woodford's men moved back yonder in the Hills, and maybe they moved out there beyond the water, and we could see nothing and hear nothing but the sand grinding under the iron of a horse's shoe. In the night the face of the Valley River was not a pleasant thing to see. ”

“ Who, shall I tell the earl, has procured and sent to him this most valuable information? for I do not affect to believe that you are that which you seem to be."
"Nothing is what it seems to be," replied the woodman; "no, nothing in this world. It is a place of unreal things; but yet you might have satisfied yourself at the abbey, that Boyd the woodman is a faithful servant of the good abbess and nuns of St. Clare, and has been so long enough for them to have great confidence in him. ”

“ Straight in front of us woods on woods band and bar the prospect, relieved by the spires of Old Woodhall and Horsington. To the right, the horizon is crowned by the almost pyramidal shape of Lincoln Minster, the seeing eye also detecting the lesser pyramid of the Chapter House, other spires, with the factory chimneys of the now busy city, more than its old prosperity being revived. ”

“ Between the shingle bank and the shore a weedy river flowed and the little town stood clamped together, its feet in the water's edge. There were decaying shipyards about the harbour, and wooden breakwaters stretched long, thin arms seawards for ships that did not come. On the other side of the railway apple blossoms showed above a white-washed wall; some market gardening was done in the low-lying fields, whence the downs rose in gradual ascents. On the first slope there was a fringe of trees. That was Woodview. ”

“ The air is keen and bracing. Around us we can see countless leagues of forest country and wooded ranges stretching to the far-off plains below, and climbing in rugged succession, range on range, right up to the topmost peaks of the main mountain chain above us.
The fourteen-mile drive to Woodville is very beautiful. ”

“ A little above Woodburn Grange, and nearer to Rockville, lies the village of Woodburn. It is not very large, and chiefly built round a spacious green, on which the young men in summer evenings enjoy their games [Pg 112] of cricket, ninepins, bowls, and quoits. At the corner where the road enters the green from Rockville, and, of course, from Castleborough, stands the blacksmith’s shop, where frequently two or three farm-horses stand waiting to be shod; and a number of ploughs and harrows lie expecting repairs. ”

“ During all this time the woodman and his wife stood helpless and trembling. The light spring cart was soon brought by Boddily and Palin through the wood and over the heath; Scammel was hoisted in, and Sir Henry Clavering and George Woodburn came and took a view of him. There the great strong fellow lay on the straw at the bottom of the cart with his eyes shut, and his features, rendered almost black with rage, wore a sullen air of dogged endurance. ”

“ The Woodhill is a romantic, green little mount, situated at the west side of the Manor, which washes its base on the east, and separates it from Langhaugh heights, part of a lofty, rocky, and heathery mountain range, and on the west is the ruin of the ancient peel-house of old Posso, long the residence of the Nasmyth family. ”

“ When laws, and creeds, and people, all are lost.
The name Woodhall implies the existence, at one time, of a hall in a wood, and that of sufficient importance to give its name to the whole demesne. [126a] Of such a building we have the traces.
The reader of these pages will have learnt that Woodhall Spa is but a modern creation, in what was, not long ago, an outlying corner of the parish from which it gets its name. The original village of Woodhall, comprising a few scattered farmhouses and cottages near the church, is distant some four miles from the Spa. ”

“ Woodbridge then bore away the palm from the county capital, as the home of literature and poetry and romance. As a town, it is more prettily situated than are most East Anglian villages and towns. The principal thoroughfare, as you rode through it by one of the Yarmouth coaches, that connected it at that time with the Metropolis, was long and narrow. If you turned off to the right you came to the Market-place, where were the leading shops. ”

“ Seven summers more the grand old mulberry-tree at Woodford Cottage has borne leaf, flower, and fruit; the old dog that used to lie snarling under its branches, lies there still, but snarls no more. Between him and the upper air are two feet of earth, together with an elegant canine tombstone, on which Miss Rothesay, by the entreaty of the disconsolate Meliora, has modelled in clay a very good likeness of the departed.
Snap is the only individual who has passed away at Woodford Cottage; in all things else there has been an increase, not a decrease. ”

“ The tinsmiths looked the Woodman over carefully and then answered that they thought they could mend him so he would be as good as ever. So they set to work in one of the big yellow rooms of the castle and worked for three days and four nights, hammering and twisting and bending and soldering and polishing and pounding at the legs and body and head of the Tin Woodman, until at last he was straightened out into his old form, and his joints worked as well as ever. ”

“ The grooms and men-at-arms got out, and led the horses up to form their ranks on the grass sward at the foot of the woods, which then stretched in unbroken verdure from Northwood Church to Gurnard Bay and Thorness, forming part of the King's Forest of Alvington, Watchingwell, or Parkhurst.
The Lord Woodville, when all was ready, disembarked with his guests, and, attended by his pages, he mounted his horse on the green grass above, great state being observed, and great care taken, by laying down mats and cloths, that he should not soil his feet on the muddy shingle. ”

“ We remount the hill, which we descended on leaving Thimbleby for Horncastle, but by a different road, viz., one running due west. Half way up the ascent of this, the westernmost spur of the chalky Wolds, we have two roads, either of which would bring us to Woodhall Spa, almost equi-distant by either; but that is not, as yet, our destination. We continue the ascent, due westward. The summit reached, we have a wide prospect before us. To the left, on a clear day, Boston Stump is visible, the Tower on the Moor rises above the woods, beyond that Tattershall castle and church ”