. The North Devon coast. n railwaystation, a brewery, and some entirely modernhouses stand upon the spot where the merchantsdid not disdain to live over their counting-houses,looking upon the river, where the weather-beatenvessels, at last come home from alien seas, werewarped to shore. Of that old time there is a veryfine old doorway left in Castle Street; and in CrossStreet, near by, over a tailors shop, there is thefirst-floor front room of a late sixteenth-centuryhouse with a most elaborate Renaissance plasterceiling and frieze, probably executed for someenriched merchant, fully conscious
. The North Devon coast. n railwaystation, a brewery, and some entirely modernhouses stand upon the spot where the merchantsdid not disdain to live over their counting-houses,looking upon the river, where the weather-beatenvessels, at last come home from alien seas, werewarped to shore. Of that old time there is a veryfine old doorway left in Castle Street; and in CrossStreet, near by, over a tailors shop, there is thefirst-floor front room of a late sixteenth-centuryhouse with a most elaborate Renaissance plasterceiling and frieze, probably executed for someenriched merchant, fully conscious of what wasdue, in the way of display, to his wealth. Thedesign is curious, the workmanship rough, thefeeling of it imbued with a religious cast ; char- HISTORY, COMMERCIAL IMPORTANCE 165 acteristics, all of them, common to much work ofthe kind executed at that period in North Somersetand North Devon, from Minehead to Renaissance had come very slowly down thisway, on its long journey from Italy, and had lost. AN OLD DOOR, BARNSTAPLE. on the way the line touch of its native land. Ithad lost also much of the somewhat pagan char-acter it exhibited there, and became greatly con-cerned in the more prominent narratives of theOld Testament. Vague legends tell of wandering i66 THE NORTH DEVON COAST Italian craftsmen executing the plaster ceilingsand elaborate chimney-piece designs often foundin old houses of the better class in these districts,but they were probably Englishmen, who hadpicked up something of the trick of the new style,without very much of foreign dexterity, but hadimported their own thought into the work. Atany rate the numerous examples met with haveso striking a general likeness of treatment thatthe conclusion of their being the work of a distinctschool becomes inevitable. Here, in this Cross Street example, the subjectis Adam and Eve ; Eve (with her arms ending ina trefoil instead of hands) about to pluck a verylarge apple off a very small tree, and Adam
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectdevonen, bookyear1908
