PICTURE IT, THINK OF IT COLONIALS THEN IF YOU CAN.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3309, 9 November 1883, Page 2

PICTURE IT, THINK OF IT COLONIALS THEN IF YOU CAN.

The following description of a fine old English house is worth reading : One of those grand old houses which our ancestors built to last unto their latest posterity has recently entered upon a new stage of its existence. The “ Old Yicarage” at Neston, which has just been converted into a school, is one of the most remarkable of the halftimbered houses in Cheshire. It was probably erected towards the end of the 13th century,and it contains an astonishing quantity of grand old oak. Beneath the picturesque old porch is a door fastened with a lock, which for size is almost unique—l7in long and ISin broad. This door leads into a large hall pannelled in oak, from which rises a wide staircase of solid black oak. The doors also are of black oak, and the windows ore still protected by the massive wooden shutters of a longforgotten age. The house appears to have been very little altered, and several of the rooms are of groat size. Some of the rafters in the roof,veritable tree trunks, are from 70 to 80in in girth, and they are all perfectly sound. This picturesque old place is built to the true cardinal points, and its foundations are in the solid rock. Long, low, and many-gabled, it is still as beautiful and as sturdy as the British oak of which it is built.”