_PONT AUDEMER._


About one hundred and fifty miles in a direct line from the door of the
Society of British Architects in Conduit Street, London (and almost
unknown, we venture to say, to the majority of its members), sleeps the
little town of PONT AUDEMER, with its quaint old gables, its
tottering houses, its Gothic 'bits,' its projecting windows, carved oak
galleries, and streets of time-worn buildings--centuries old. Old
dwellings, old customs, old caps, old tanneries, set in a landscape of
bright green hills.[5]

'Old as the hills,' and almost as unchanged in aspect, are the ways of
the people of Pont Audemer, who dress and tan hides, and make merry as
their fathers did before them. For several centuries they have devoted
themselves to commerce and the arts of peace, and in the enthusiasm of
their business have desecrated one or two churches into tanneries. But
they are a conservative and primitive people, loving to do as their
ancestors did, and to dwell where they dwelt; they build their houses to
last for several generations, and take pride and interest in the 'family
mansion,' a thing unknown and almost impossible amongst the middle
classes of most communities.

[Illustration: MARKET PLACE, PONT AUDEMER.]

Pont Audemer was once warlike; it had its castle in feudal times
(destroyed in the 14th century), and the legend exists that cannon was
here first used in warfare. It has its history of wars in the time of
the Norman dukes, but its aspect is now quiet and peaceful, and its
people appear happy and contented; the little river Rille winds about