So they sheltered themselves from the wind and rain by having a courtyard or by making an E or H shaped plan for their dwelling-place.  Moreover, they made their walls very thick in order that the winds should not blow or the rain beat through them.  Their rooms, too, were panelled or hung with tapestry—­famous things for making a room warm and cosy.  We have plaster walls covered with an elegant wall-paper which has always a cold surface, hence the air in the room, heated by the fire, is chilled when it comes into contact with the cold wall and creates draughts.  But oak panelling or woollen tapestry soon becomes warm, and gives back its heat to the room, making it delightfully comfortable and cosy.

One foolish thing our forefathers did, and that was to allow the great beams that help to support the upper floor to go through the chimney.  How many houses have been burnt down owing to that fatal beam!  But our ancestors were content with a dog-grate and wood fires; they could not foresee the advent of the modern range and the great coal fires, or perhaps they would have been more careful about that beam.

[Illustration:  Section of Mouldings of Cornice on Panelling, the Church House, Goudhurst]

Fire is, perhaps, the chief cause of the vanishing of old houses, but it is not the only cause.  The craze for new fashions at the beginning of the last century doomed to death many a noble mansion.  There seems to have been a positive mania for pulling down houses at that period.  As I go over in my mind the existing great houses in this country, I find that by far the greater number of the old houses were wantonly destroyed about the years 1800-20, and new ones in the Italian or some other incongruous style erected in their place.  Sometimes, as at Little Wittenham, you find the lone lorn terraces of the gardens of the house, but all else has disappeared.  As Mr. Allan Fea says:  “When an old landmark disappears, who does not feel a pang of regret at parting with something which linked us with the past?  Seldom an old house is threatened with demolition but there is some protest, more perhaps from the old associations than from any particular architectural merit the building may have.”  We have many pangs of regret when we see such wanton destruction.  The old house at Weston, where the Throckmortons resided when the poet Cowper lived at the lodge, and when leaving wrote on a window-shutter—­

        Farewell, dear scenes, for ever closed to me;
        Oh! for what sorrows must I now exchange ye!

may be instanced as an example of a demolished mansion.  Nothing is now left of it but the entrance-gates and a part of the stables.  It was pulled down in 1827.  It is described as a fine mansion, possessing secret chambers which were occupied by Roman Catholic priests when it was penal to say Mass.  One of these chambers was found to contain, when the house was pulled down, a rough bed, candlestick, remains