Wall

Asakaf.

Wall is a vertical structure that separates rooms and encloses spaces in a home.

Wall.

And jadar.

Door is a movable barrier that provides access between rooms or to the outside.

A wrought-iron window casement unearthed near an early seventeenth-century building site.

Another illustration captioned, Wall or fireplace tiles, found at Jamestown, which were made in Holland.

The blue designs and pictures were painted on a white background.

End of caption.

In the clay vales of the Midlands, houses were often cruck-framed with walls of mud or wattle.

In Devon and Cornwall, thick cob walls of earth and straw were common, and some of these houses survive to this day, still lived in.

In stone country, such as the Cotswolds, parts of the Pennines and the far north, Walls were often built of stone, sometimes laid dry without mortar, sometimes bonded with clay.

In the Fenlands of East Anglia, where timber was scarce but reeds were plentiful, houses might be built with reed walls plastered with clay and roofed with thick reed thatch.

Now let us travel north and west to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

These were more efficient at removing smoke, but they lost much of their heat up the flue and warmed only the part of the room nearest to them.

The wealthy fought the cold with textiles.

Walls were hung with tapestries and painted cloths, which helped to keep out draughts and gave the room a sense of warmth and colour.

The ancient red-brick pile rises out of its reed-grown moat with that air of mystery which age and seeming neglect only can impart.

coming upon it unexpectedly especially towards dusk one is struck with the strange dignified melancholy pervading it surely hood's haunted house or poe's house of ussher stands before us and we cannot get away from the impression that a mystery is wrapped within its walls harvington hall dates from the reign of henry the eighth but it has undergone various changes so it is difficult to affix any particular period or style to its architecture indeed it is this medley of different styles which forms such a poetically picturesque outline in its day harvington could doubtless hold its own with the finest mansions in the country but now it is forgotten deserted and crumbling to pieces its very history appears to be lost to the world as those who go to the county histories and general topographical works for information will find inside the mansion like the exterior the hand of decay is perceptible on every side the rooms are ruined the windows broken the floors unsafe excepting by the way a small portion of the building which is habitable a ponderous broad oak staircase leads to a dismantled state-room shorn of the principal part of its panelling carving and chimney-pieces footnote most of the interior fittings were removed to coughton court warwickshire other desolate apartments retain their names as if in mockery the drawing-room the chapel lady yates's nursery and so forth at the top of the staircase however we must look around carefully for beneath the stairs is a remarkable hiding-place with a slight stretch of the imagination we can see an indistinct form stealthily remove the floor-board of one of the stairs and creep beneath it this particular step of a short flight running from the landing into a garret, is, upon closer inspection, indeed movable, and beneath gapes a dark cavity about five feet square, on the floor of which still remains the piece of sedge matting whereon a certain Father Wall rested his aching limbs a few days prior to his capture and execution in August 1679. the unfortunate man was taken at rushock court a few miles away where he was traced after leaving halvington there is a communication between the hiding-place and the banqueting-room through a small concealed aperture in the wainscoting large enough to admit of a tube through which a straw could be thrust for the unhappy occupant to suck up any liquid his friends might be able to supply in a gloomy corridor leading from the tower to the reception-room is another priest's hole beneath the floor and entered by a trap-door artfully hidden in the boards this black recess is some seven feet in depth and can be made secure from within supposing the searchers had tracked a fugitive priest as far as this corridor the odds are in favour that they would have passed over his head in their haste to reach the tower where they would make sure in their own minds at least of discovering him Again, here there is a communication with the outside world.

An oblong aperture in the top oak beam of the entrance gateway to the house, measuring about four inches across, is the secret opening, small enough to escape the most inquisitive eye, yet large enough to allow of a written note to pass between the captive and those upon the alert watching his interests.

footnote in addition to the above hiding-places at halvington one was discovered so recently as eighteen ninety four at least so we have been informed this was some years after our visit to the old hall a subterranean passage is said to run under the moat from a former hiding-place but this is doubtful at any rate there are no evidences of it nowadays Altogether, Harvington is far from cheerful, even to a pond hard by called Gallows Pool.

[upbeat music] Good day, and welcome to this podcast of If Walls Could Talk.

I'm Jon Wyatt of Walls and Ceilings Magazine.

Joining me today is our consistent friend.

His name is Tom Harris of Tom Harris PUR Consulting LLC, and it is my pleasure to chat with him.

Yeah, I'm doing great, Jon.

Thanks very much for hooking up again.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak with Walls and Ceilings Magazine, and, uh, you know, we got some things going on in the industry, so we should get to it.

I think we should.