Here the edifices of such
architecture seem to be Elizabethan, and of earlier date. A woman in
Stratford told us that the rooms, very low on the ground-floor, grew
loftier from story to story to the attic. The fashion of windows, in
Coventry, is such as I have not hitherto seen. In the highest story, a
window of the ordinary height extends along the whole breadth of the
house, ten, fifteen, perhaps twenty feet, just like any other window of a
commonplace house, except for this inordinate width. One does not easily
see what the inhabitants want of so much window-light; but the fashion is
very general, and in modern houses, or houses that have been modernized,
this style of window is retained. Thus young people who grow up amidst
old people contract quaint and old-fashioned manners and aspect.
I imagine that these ancient towns--such as Chester and Stratford,
Warwick and Coventry--contain even a great deal more antiquity than meets
the eye. You see many modern fronts; but if you peep or penetrate
inside, you find an antique arrangement,--old rafters, intricate
passages, and ancient staircases, which have put on merely a new outside,
and are likely still to prove good for the usual date of a new house.
They put such an immense and stalwart ponderosity into their frameworks,
that I suppose a house of Elizabeth's time, if renewed, has at least an
equal chance of durability with one that is new in every part. All the
hotels in Coventry, so far as I noticed them, are old, with new fronts;
and they have an archway for the admission of vehicles into the
court-yard, and doors opening into the rooms of the building on each side
of the arch.
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