whether because of the character and beauty of their handiwork, or
from the historical associations which are indissolubly connected with
it, cannot but regard with pain and abhorrence any cause which tends
towards the demolition or destruction of the monuments of the past. To
these it is a significant and distressing fact that hardly any modern
English buildings or streets possess the qualities which give the
value and charm to the old cities, towns, and villages of which we are
the grateful inheritors. If any reader is inclined to doubt the truth
of this statement, or to consider the sentiment expressed extravagant
or groundless, let him consider the difference between the old towns
and the new.

Evesham provides a typical and sufficiently striking instance of the
contrasted methods and results. Here there is hardly an old house
which has not a local and individual character. Many of them may be
plain, severely plain, some possibly ugly; but in each can be read by
all who will, a distinct and separate thought, or series of thoughts,
connecting the dwelling with its builders and owners, and with the
soil out of which it has sprung.

As the varying undulations of the face of the country tell a plain
tale to the geologist, so the shape and materials of human habitations
tell their story to the student of architecture and the history of
man.

The poet Wordsworth pointed out that one of the great charms of the
Lake country lay in the way in which the dwellings sprang out of the
hill side, as if a natural growth born of the requirements of the
peasant or farmer and the materials provided by nature. Throughout
England this was once the case; no two houses were precisely alike