It had but its
one street some half mile in length but that street was a gem of
mediaeval domestic architecture. For the most part the houses that
lined it were blocks of contiguous cottages, which had been converted
either singly or by twos and threes into dwellings containing the
comforts demanded by the twentieth century, but externally they
preserved the antiquity which, though it might be restored or
supplemented by bathrooms or other conveniences, presented a truly
Elizabethan appearance. There were, of course, accretions such as old
inn signs above front-doors and old bell-pulls at their sides, but the
doors were uniformly of inconveniently low stature, roofs were of stone
slabs or old brick, in which a suspiciously abundant crop of
antirrhinums and stone crops had anchored themselves, and there was
hardly a garden that did not contain a path of old paving-stones, a
mulberry-tree and some yews cut into shape.
Nothing in the place was more blatantly mediaeval than the village
green, across which Georgie took his tripping steps after leaving the
presence of his queen. Round it stood a row of great elms, and in its
centre was the ducking-pond, according to Riseholme tradition, though
perhaps in less classical villages it might have passed merely for a
duck-pond. But in Riseholme it would have been rank heresy to dream,
even in the most pessimistic moments, of its being anything but a
ducking-pond.
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