INN ON THE SLANT.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, 24 April 1913, Page 25

INN ON THE SLANT.

Droitwich is the place of invalids, brine baths, and sinking houses. The sinking houses are apt to give the most temperate man the impression that he must have dined “.not .wisely, but too well” the previous evening. The whole, needless to say, is a case of cause and effect, the foregoing being the effect and the cause the streams of brine, which exist at a depth of about 200 ft below the surface of the town. At the “Waggon and Horses” in High-street, Eng., this is particularly noticeable. From one room into another there is a drop of over 3 ft, and a table which is apparently slanting uphill is really slanting down. The whole house sinks on one side at the rate of a little over an inch a year. You don’t notice the tilt so much because the whole street is sinking at the same time. The strangest effect, perhaps, is to be seen in the bedrooms of the inn, where the castors have been taken off one end of the bedsteads, and blocks of wood nearly 6in deep placed under the other end, and, as an additional precaution, the bedsteads are tied securely to the wall. Before that was done it was no uncommon thing to go to bed at one end of the room and to wake up at the other. A. plumb line dropped from the upper bedroom windows to the ground is the only way really to tell from the outsiae that anything is the matter. The house, is equally well known now as the “Crooked House”; in fact, it is to-day one of the sights of the town. Its proprietor, Mr. A. F. Kench, has been secretary of the local L.V.A. for 14 years, and was previously president and vice-presi-dent. He has occupied the house for the past 20 years.