Studio: international art (67.1916)

Shtdio-Tcilk

months back all such features were removed to
make way for the present exhibition, inspired by a
new- idea, which is much more in harmony with
the picturesque old manor-house. It is now a
“Folk-Museum,” designed to give to people of the
time that now is as realistic an idea as may be of
the domestic life of their ancestors, and it would
be difficult to find a building more peculiarly and
romantically fitted for the purpose than the
quaintly named Hall-i’ th’-Wood.

The Hall is not and never has been a “ lordly”
dwelling. A comfortable, homely “folk” resi-
dence, it began in quite a small way as the
“ House in the Wode ” in the late fifteenth cen-
tury, put out a north-west wing as its owners grew
and prospered in the sixteenth, and certain more
elaborate southern additions, including a hand-
some stone porch and a fine oak staircase, in the
seventeenth. A portion of wall in the kitchen has
been stripped to show how our ancestors built
their less pretentious dwellings of “ wattle and
daub.” The wood from which the Hall derives
its name has long since disappeared, and the Hall
now stands high on a hard-paved roadway. The
charming old black-and-white “post and plaster”
work, quaint gables, and overhanging eaves of its
Tudor portion are in striking contrast with the
plain drab brickwork and tall smoke-belching
chimney of the modern industrial buildings in the
valley below.

In accordance with the central idea of the
“ Folk-Museum ” the interior is now being fur-
nished and fitted so that ultimately visitors of
to-day may be able to picture for themselves the
daily routine, the occupations and relaxations, and
all that made the home-life of a prosperous .middle-
class family residing in such a house in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries. This is by no
means a simple matter, for specimens of the
furniture, implements and utensils of this period
are not at all easy to obtain. In industrial
Lancashire itself, where old things are quickly
“ scrapped ” to make way for new, it would be
difficult, probably impossible, to make a compre-
hensive collection, but any or all the counties are
being made contributory to the plenishing of the
Hall by Sir William Lever, to whose generosity
Bolton owes the museum in its new as in its old
form, and in due time it will give a full and detailed
picture of an old manor-house.

Already the rooms are beginning to assume
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something of the appearance they presented in the
time of the Brownlow and Norris and Starkie
families, whose initials are to be seen in stonework
or woodwork within the house, though to modern
eyes they may look rather bare and chill. In the
large hall the long oak table and solid carven settle
and chairs—one of which is of especially noble
proportions—the great open fireplace, the roasting-
spits, the bellows, the polished livery cupboard or
“ panetiere ” for storing loaves, and the “ tranchoir ”
for cutting them up speedily, suggest such a
gathering as Cowper pictured and Washington
Irving regarded as splendidly typical of English
home life in times gone by. Inside the cupboards
and carved cabinets, the dishes and plates of fine
pewter or white wood, the finely turned wooden
trenchers, forks and spoons, salt cellars, some in
lignum vitae, give an idea of the table furnishings
of the past, and a fine mahogany “ cheese-runner ”
on little castors shows how table-service was made
easy. Vessels of varied form and material testify
to the drinking customs and tastes of the hard-

HALL-l’ TH’-WOOD, BOLTON : SOUTH PORCH