COWDRY HOUSE. sisting of small and delicate flowers, turned by one of the lords of this house, who used to amuse himself with such work: in one of the rooms was a picture representing him at his turning-wheel. The pictures that were painted upon the walls were preserved, during the civil wars, by a coat of plaster, laid over the stucco: one of the officers quartered here, exercising his weapon against the wall, broke out from one of the subjects the head of Henry VIII. which was afterwards replaced. This beautiful edifice, with most of its valuable contents, an enumeration of which would far exceed our limits, was ruined by fire on the night of Tuesday, Sept. 24, 1793; an account of which is given by Mr. Gough, as follows: "Mrs. Chambers, the housekeeper, who, with the porter, and one or two more servants, were the only inhabitants of this spacious mansion, had retired to rest at her usual hour, eleven, in full confidence that all was safe, and not the smallest light was to be seen; she had scarcely slept an hour before she was alarmed by the watchman, with the cry of fire in the north gallery, and immediately saw it in flames, with all its valuable contents, without the possibility of saving a single article. The inhabitants of Medhurst, from which the house is not a mile distant, were soon ready to assist, in great numbers, and no help was wanting to remove the furniture, pictures, and library, from the three other sides of the quadrangle; but the firmness of the materials ren COWDRY HOUSE. dered it impossible to break down any part, so as to stop the progress of the flames; they quickly spread to the east side of the court, in which was the great hall, chapel, and dining-parlour; these there was opportunity to unfurnish, and to save the altar-piece, by Annigoni, but the historical paintings, on the walls of the diningparlour, were involved in the devastation, and the stucco on which they were painted, flaked off the walls." Thus, this magnificent mansion was rendered a pile of ruins, on which the capricious hand of time continues to impress a diversity of forms, which are moulded by the luxuriant growths of nature into the beautiful and picturesque. The western side of the building contains the most perfect vestiges of its architecture. The opposite extremity, with the galleries on either side, though more dilapidated, retain many traces of their former splendour; upon the walls of the dining-parlour remains of the pictures are still visible, and the windows of the hall and chapel are almost entire: within the quadrangle lies the half-consumed trunks of some of the wooden bucks above mentioned. The whole site, collectively viewed from the heights within the park, exhibits an impressive scene of ruined and deserted grandeur. |