The ancient house exhibited at the Franco-British Exhibition at Shepherd’s Bush was a typical example of an Elizabethan dwelling.  It was brought from Ipswich, where it was doomed to make room for the extension of Co-operative Stores, but so firmly was it built that, in spite of its age of three hundred and fifty years, it defied for some time the attacks of the house-breakers.  It was built in 1563, as the date carved on the solid lintel shows, but some parts of the structure may have been earlier.  All the oak joists and rafters had been securely mortised into each other and fixed with stout wooden pins.  So securely were these pins fixed, that after many vain attempts to knock them out, they had all to be bored out with augers.  The mortises and tenons were found to be as sound and clean as on the day when they were fitted by the sixteenth-century carpenters.  The foundations and the chimneys were built of brick.  The house contained a large entrance-hall, a kitchen, a splendidly carved staircase, a living-room, and two good bedrooms, on the upper floor.  The whole house was a fine specimen of East Anglian half-timber work.  The timbers that formed the framework were all straight, the diamond and curved patterns, familiar in western counties, signs of later construction, being altogether absent.  One of the striking features of this, as of many other timber-framed houses, is the carved corner or angle post.  It curves outwards as a support to the projecting first floor to the extent of nearly two feet, and the whole piece was hewn out of one massive oak log, the root, as was usual, having been placed upwards, and beautifully carved with Gothic floriations.  The full overhang of the gables is four feet six inches.  In later examples this distance between the gables and the wall was considerably reduced, until at last the barge-boards were flush with the wall.  The joists of the first floor project from under a finely carved string-course, and the end of each joist has a carved finial.  All the inside walls were panelled with oak, and the fire-place is of the typical old English character, with seats for half a dozen people in the ingle-nook.  The principal room had a fine Tudor door, and the frieze and some of the panels were enriched with an inlay of holly.  When the house was demolished many of the choicest fittings which were missing from their places were found carefully stowed under the floor boards.  Possibly a raid or a riot had alarmed the owners in some distant period, and they hid their nicest things and then were slain, and no one knew of the secret hiding-place.

[Illustration:  Norman Clamp on door of Heybridge Church, Essex]

[Illustration:  Tudor Fire-place.  Now walled up in the passage of a shop in Banbury]

The Rector of Haughton calls attention to a curious old house which certainly ought to be preserved if it has not yet quite vanished.