Laycock Abbey
16 March
My Dear Henry
at length the red Cedar is down – I had announced that Gale <1> might make at least a million of pencils out of it – when behold it proves to be [diseased?] inside almost to the top. It should have been cut twenty years ago. I am sorry about Reid, <2> for I think he seems a good gardener, and Gwynne <3> says he is quiet & inoffensive, & has never said an objectionable word since. She is very ill, keeping her bed with a very serious disorder, inflammation of the Kidneys. Kendrick <4> is very attentive & comes every day, but I am uneasy about her.
Mr F. <5> having been ruminating on the improvement I mentioned to you, of making a servants room over Wright’s, <6> sent for Mr Manners <7> the Architect who built that pretty church at Bath; to consult him about it. He said his terms for coming over in the Morning were two guineas & his expences, so we knew the head & front of this piece of extravagance. He said this Abbey was a place he had for years wished to see, & he took several Sketches. We took the opportunity of shewing him the steps, & he said the Mason he employed had a method of screwing old steps together without displacing any, but he feared these were too old & cracked. If that could have been done it would have cost very little, but to day the Mason came & said it was not a case for screwing together, a thing he practised often when stones were merely opened & disjoined from one another by time & wet, but not broken. When Strong <8> wanted to rebuild the steps seven years ago, he said they would cost £40 – this Man says the longer they go on the more they will cost because fewer of the Stones will do again. He has a very honest manner & made all sorts of calculations with Mr F. of which the result is that to take them down & rebuild them properly would cost £60 but that to do them decently & to last for thirty years or so, would cost £30. The first way would last 200 yrs which is longer I think than necessary. He said they will not fall down this summer but the first frosts next winter, they will fall outwards. If they are broke in the fall, of course those stones will not serve again. You have plenty of time to consider as of course you will have nothing done till you are here in the Summer. Bankes <9> can give in his estimate too, & it is always a good thing to let them see that you can employ others if they are not reasonable. Mr F. does not mean to execute any of his projects till he comes back from abroad. He goes in August to the Bains d’Aix where he must be before the end of the Summer, & so on to Nice, where I fear he will be dismal without us. I cannot help wondering that when you were here nearly a fortnight you did not yourself examine into the new line of railway, particularly as it is such a little way off, particularly and as you knew Mr Awdry’s ways, & they certainly now never will mend.
Notes:
1. John Gale, carpenter at Lacock.
2. John Reid, head gardener at Lacock Abbey. [See Doc. No: 03438].
3. Mrs Gwynne (d. winter 1841/1842), lady’s maid, cook and housekeeper to Elisabeth Feilding.
4. Dr Kendrick, Talbot family doctor in Wiltshire.
5. Rear Admiral Charles Feilding (1780–1837), Royal Navy; WHFT’s step-father.
6. James Wright, footman to the Talbots & Constable for Lacock.
7. George Phillips Manners (1789–1866), architect.
8. Strong's identity has yet to be established. However, Awdry met Mr. Strong at Box [see Doc. No: 02006], the Wiltshire hamlet whose quarry originally provided Lacock Abbey with its stone. It is possible that Strong was there temporarily to select stone for the renovations at Lacock Abbey, but given the expansion of the area in the 19th c., perhaps Strong was resident there. The 1841 census for Box (the earliest one available) points to two possibilities. The first, James Strong (b. 1796), was a mason, but the Lacock mason, Charles Selman Banks (1805-1881) did most of the masonry at Lacock at this time. Thomas Strong (b. 1781) was a builder, and seems the more likely candidate.
9. Probably George Banks, snr (1786–1864), stonemason & coalseller, Lacock.