As the varying undulations of the face of the country tell a plain tale to the geologist, so the shape and materials of human habitations tell their story to the student of architecture and the history of man. The poet Wordsworth pointed out that one of the great charms of the Lake country lay in the way in which the dwellings sprang out of the hill side, as if a natural growth born of the requirements of the peasant or farmer and the materials provided by nature. Throughout England this was once the case; no two houses were precisely alike because no two people had precisely the same ideas, wishes and requirements; and the material was dictated by the stone or timber provided by the district. Every building was in old times the combined expression of the individual man and the _genius loci_. The timber cottages which are still to be found in the town tell of the time when tracts of the original forest still lingered, and oak was the cheapest material fit for building. Often the foundation of the walls is of stone, and the earliest stone to be used was that which could be had for the digging, the blue lias found in thin layers embedded in the clay of which the vale is composed. In the back streets which retain, as would be expected, more of their primitive character than the more respectable thoroughfares, this blue stone has been much used, and in the churches it can be seen in the earlier parts making a very pretty wall with its thin horizontal lines. The tower of the church of All Saints shows it to great advantage. Another stone is also employed, and one far better suited for building, because it can be obtained in blocks of almost any size, and carved with the utmost delicacy. This is oolite, the stone of which the Bell Tower is built. From Norman times it was used in the more important parts of the Abbey, as is shown in the foundations of the great tower now exposed to view, and in Abbot Reginald's gateway. But the oolite stone could not be got much nearer than Broadway, and what was used by the monks in all probability came from the hill above that village. In numerous old houses this stone is made use of, but in almost all it must have come indirectly, having once formed part of the structure of the monastic buildings, or perhaps of the castle which for a short time flanked the bridge on the Bengeworth side of the river.