Roundhouse

“ Flagged pathways cross the greensward of the court, and there is a fine hall wherein the inmates used to dine together.
As we traverse the village streets we often meet with these grey piles of sixteenth-century almshouses, often low, one-storeyed buildings, picturesque and impressive, each house having a welcoming porch with a seat on each side and a small garden full of old-fashioned flowers. The roof is tiled, on which moss and lichen grow, and the chimney-stacks are tall and graceful. An inscription records the date and name of the generous founder with his arms and motto. ”

“ They wait behind a heavy curtain till the music ceases, and the dancers are gone, and the lights are extinguished, and the long saloon is dark and empty. Then the muffled stranger leads through a maze of galleries and corridors, unlocks, at length, a door, bids Rudolph enter, and Rudolph obeys. This apartment, also, is magnificent, but not so large as the other. At one side is a downy couch with golden-fringed drapery, and there the great Czar reposes. Upon the wall, near, hangs a sword. ”

“ The foreman and his family resided in the section house, a two-story building; the tool house was used for storing the hand car and the track tools, while the bunk house, a small, one-story building, formed primarily the sleeping quarters, and secondly the social center of the section crew, whose five roughly dressed men were only permitted to enter the adjacent section house, where they boarded, at meal hours, as the foreman's home was at all other times considered by them a sort of hallowed spot. ”

“ It is conceived, that the light, coming in in this manner through the cells, and so across the intermediate area, will be sufficient for the inspector’s lodge. But, for this purpose, both the windows in the cells, and those corresponding to them in the lodge, should be as large as the strength of the building, and what shall be deemed a necessary attention to economy, will permit.
To the windows of the lodge there are blinds, as high up as the eyes of the prisoners in their cells can, by any means they can employ, be made to reach. ”

“ A square opening, closing with a shutter, admits light into each room, and short logs of wood or rude benches, serve for seats. Many families that have been brought up in England in respectable circumstances, live for several years in a hut of this description, until they can find time and means to build themselves a better habitation; and a hut of this kind is generally to be seen contiguous to a better house, and is occupied by the male servants, who are mostly prisoners. ”

“ The station club-house, frequented by all the civil and military swells and their families, was a low down, mud-walled, tawdry affair, with a dingy, thatched grass roof, the building having been erected during years by additions, so was without form or comeliness, becoming more disreputable in appearance in proportion as our building grew in size and beauty. ”

“ We were led into a roomy court-yard within the fort, which was covered with pebbles, and were placed in a row on a bench which stood within a small building. After we had remained here about an hour, a door was opened, and we were taken through a second court into a third, where the soldiers who accompanied us, laid aside their sabres, daggers, and the straw sandals which they wore instead of shoes, and at the same time, pulled off our boots. We were now taken into an immense 58 hall, the floor of which was covered with magnificently worked carpets. ”

“ From house to house, from hut to hut, and from barn to barn, the factor and his menials proceeded, carrying on the work of demolition, until there was scarcely a human habitation left standing in the district. Able-bodied men who, if the matter would rest with a mere trial of physical force, would have bound the factor and his party hand and foot, and sent them out of the district, stood aside as dumb spectators. ”

“ Two small windows, destitute of glass, permitted us to peer into the interior of this dilapidated old structure, and we saw within, a floor of beaten earth, a rough stone fireplace, and a few rude horse-stalls. We felt sure that this tumble-down building had been neither a dwelling-house nor a stable, but a noon-house; and the occupants of a neighboring farm-house confirmed our decision. Too worthless to destroy, too out of the way to be of any use to any person, that old noon-house, through neglect and isolation, has remained standing until to-day. ”

“ A deep archway leads from the large courtyard into a smaller, more secluded one, where is the entrance to the staircase which the Emperor uses. On each side of the large “Hof” are big, heavy, iron gates{89} kept by soldiers, who all day long close and open them to the passing carriages and other traffic.
On New Year’s morning the courtyard is pervaded by footmen in gay uniforms with very chilly-looking pink silk legs, who pick their way gingerly over the round cobble-stones, hastening here and there in a very busy preoccupied manner. ”

“ The dwellings bear witness to the occupation of their owners. The fences are constructed of ships' knees and planks. In their parlors you may see on one side a rough board door, on the other an exquisitely finished rose-wood or mahogany cabin door, with silver or porcelain knobs. Contrast reigns everywhere. ”

“ He can put up a house-front with a door, and if needed, a porch. He can put up a shop, or for that matter, a couple of adjacent shops. He can put up the arched gates of a city or castle. These are comparatively shallow structures. But he can also take advantage of the whole depth of the space, and arrange a chamber, a cave, or a bower, furnishing it as he pleases, and adding doors at the back or side, or a back window, which would enable him to give more light, even if only borrowed light from the tire-house, to an interior scene. ”

“ We enter the porch, and find ourselves in the hall, with its great fireplace, its large south window, where sits the mistress at her needlework, as of old; and here is the high table, the [62] wall panelled and carved, where sit the yeoman and his family at meals, whilst the labourers sit below. This very simple yet interesting house is quite a fortress; it is walled up against the stormy gales that sweep the moor. It is a prison too, for it catches and holds captive the sunbeams that fall into the bright little court. ”

“ At the back of the lodge stood a crazy porch of rustic woodwork, and therefrom a door, lolling on broken hinges, gave access to the interior of the building. There was a gap here sufficient for the entrance of a man, and he went through it swiftly, and along a stone-paved passage beyond, that was dumb with dust and littered with flaked rags of plaster and crackling wall-paper. So he made his way to a front room that looked upon the drive ”

“ A number of women are sitting working together in a big room not unlike an old English tithe barn in its timbered construction, but with windows high up next the roof. It is furnished as a courthouse, with the floor raised next the walls, and on this raised flooring a seat for the Sheriff, a rough jury box on his right, and a bar to put prisoners to on his left. ”

“ In time of peace, however, the visitor passed unscathed through the gate into a vast courtyard enclosed by huge battlemented walls or towers; a courtyard that is almost a village, for it contains the church, the knights’ quarters, the squires’ house, the lodgings for pages and servants, the barracks, the cottages of the artisans and labourers on the estate, the bake-house, the kitchen, the walled and gated fish-pond, the fountain, the washing-place, the stables, the barns, etc. A second gate, a second portcullis, lead to a smaller court, where—huge, swart, and sombre—towers the keep. ”

“ The head house proved to be a circular building about thirty feet in diameter; it stood on posts, and had a platform running all around it, where persons could sit in the daytime or sleep at night. The head house is not only a lodging-place for strangers, but it serves as the council-chamber for any public business, and is the dormitory of many of the young men, especially in time of war, when they are liable to be summoned at short notice. Sometimes it is the largest building in a village, and the inhabitants take their turns in keeping it in order. ”

“ The houses do not have doors below, but they use ladders, which can be lifted up like a drawbridge, and so go up to the corridors which are on the inside of the village. As the doors of the houses open on the corridor of that story, the corridor serves as a street. The houses that open on the plain are right back of those that open on the court, and in time of war they go through those behind them. ”

“ The lodge in which we reside is larger than any other in the town, and being that of a grand chief, it serves as a council-house for the nation. The roof is supported by two series of pillars, or rough vertical posts, forked at top for the reception of the transverse connecting pieces of each series ”

“ In any London suburb we still may see modest villas thus entered by a flight of steps raised above a high basement, which are, doubtless, quite unconscious of their direct descent from the keep of the twelfth century, entered only by a ladder reared against the front, or by knotted ropes let down from the first-floor window! ”

“ The most of life in the sleepy old town centered about the Frost Hotel, a three-story wooden structure, where the officers of the garrison lodged, and the court house, a dignified edifice of red brick, a block beyond, where in other days my father presided on the bench, now completely surrounded by a military camp. ”

“ Police-officers Ruthven, Ellice, and Smithers, were the first to mount the ladder, and enter the loft.
‘There were about five-and-twenty men in the room, eating bread and cheese, and drinking porter, or selecting arms from a long carpenter’s bench which stood close by the wall. Just at that juncture, Thistlewood, hearing a noise, and some one calling, “Hallo! Show a light!” ”

“ And then suddenly they turned a corner and came on a mass of people, a densely packed crowd of men and women, staring at a mean-looking little door sunk into a high wall.
"Better take my arm," the inspector suggested. "Make way there! Make way!" ”

“ As some minutes passed and he did not appear, I had time to look around, and get acquainted with the salle à manger. It was a fine room, old-fashioned though it was; and modern architecture has still to produce its rival in my eyes. The ceiling was very high, the fireplace wide, with tiled jambs; the wood-work carved in stiff but stately patterns; the windows were deep, with enticing window-seats, and the walls were covered with pictures. Pictures, I imagined, of people who had once owned Rutledge: some of them, perhaps, lived in this very house, ate and drank in this very room. ”

“ Before World War II such sandy outlying acres had been scarcely more than squatters’ land. Now they had become dear to the heart of the developer, with his flat-topped regular rows of pastel ranch houses. The Randolph Woods were flat as a punctured tire.
We missed the right turn at Oak Street and drove almost to Randolph before we realized our mistake. One thing was already clear to us: The getaway driver and his crew must have been familiar with the back roads. ”

“ Nor is this the only point in favour of the model lodging-house, of which there are several situated in the foulest portions of the metropolis, and which accommodate sometimes seven hundred inmates, or the full strength of many a regiment. Besides containing pure air, which, with a proper system of ventilation, costs nothing, but is of incalculable value to human life, the lodging-house, instead of being confined to one room, used for all purposes, is divided into the ordinary apartments of an inn ”

“ As one enters the great building from the street and passes between heavy doors into a large courtyard, the first thing that attracts one’s attention is an enormous face, four feet in diameter, which looks down at the intruder from over an archway that leads to a second courtyard. The gigantic face has a malicious grin yet bears a distinct resemblance to Bacchus. ”

“ Each town was built round a square, in which the old men lounged all day long, gossiping and wrangling. Fronting the square, and surrounding it, were the four long, low communal houses, eight feet high, sixteen feet deep, and forty to sixty in length. They were wooden frames, supported on pine posts, with roof-tree and rafters of hickory. Their fronts were open piazzas, their sides were lathed and plastered, sometimes with white marl, sometimes with reddish clay, and they had plank doors and were roofed neatly with cypress bark or clapboards. ”

“ It is not inhabited, but the door is kept locked with a watchman perpetually on guard over it. The building is used solely as a storehouse, each family in the village having the right to the use of one of the rooms that it contains—there were said to be no less than one hundred and twenty-five chambers in the building. ”

“ The usual slab-cut palisades surrounded the fort. In the center of the square stood the main building surmounted by a high balcony. Inside was the great saloon or hall—sixty feet by thirty—decorated with paintings of the leading partners in the full flush of ruffles and court costume. Here the partners [12] and clerks and leading guides took their meals. Round this hall were the partners’ bedrooms; in the basement, the kitchen. Flanking the walls of the courtyard were other buildings equally large—the servants’ quarters, storehouses, warerooms, clerks’ lodgings. ”

“ A raised ascent, surmounted by a porch covered with trellis-work, in which knotty stalks of the vine entwine, leads to one of the seven or [Pg 100] eight walks assigned to the prisoners. The vast buildings which surround these courts very much resemble those of barrack or manufactory kept with exceeding care. There are lofty façades of white stone, pierced with high and large windows, which admit of the free circulation of pure air. ”