with the glamour, formerly attaching to hops beyond any other crop,
that came to me later.

I visited the old Alton farm, and obtained all particulars of the
latest kind of hop-kiln in the neighbourhood from the inventor, and
instructed him to prepare plans and specifications for the conversion
of an old malthouse close to the Manor. I contracted with Tom G. for
all the carpenter's work, and with an excellent stonemason or
bricklayer for that belonging to his department. They both entered
with enthusiasm upon the job, and we had many interesting discussions
as to improvement, as it proceeded. Tom G. was a man of great
resource, and could always find a way out of every difficulty; he told
me, before we began, that he could see the completed building as if
actually finished, just as a great sculptor once said how easy it was
to produce a statue from a block of marble, for all he had to do was
to cut away the superfluous material!

The alterations entailed a new roof from end to end of the old
building, and a new floor for the upper part, the length being about
70 and the width about 20 feet. The old roof was covered mostly with
stone-slates--flakes of limestone from the Cotswolds--very uneven in
size and rough as to surface, and in part with ordinary blue slates.
The latter lie much more closely on the laths, the stone slates
allowing the passage of more air between them, and it was interesting
to find that while the ancient laths under the stone slates were
fairly well preserved, those beneath the blue slates were much
decayed, evidently from the fact of the damp in an unheated building
remaining longer where the air was excluded, though one would have
expected the close-lying blue slates to be the better protection of
the two.