In his _Story of some English Shires_, as told by the late Dr. Mandell Creighton, speaking of the physical features of Cheshire, he says: “Three great forests covered much of the surface of the ground. From Chester to the sea stretched the forest of Wirral, from the Mersey to the Dee extended the forest of Delamere, and the forest of Macclesfield formed an impenetrable barrier between Cheshire and Derbyshire”; and he adds a remark not altogether irrelevant to the matter in hand: “There was so little agriculture that the men of Cheshire used to leave their homes and serve as harvesters in districts where corn was grown, in the same way as did Irish labourers in our own days.” These copious sources of timber have long since disappeared, and the once afforested area has given place to those broad acres under cultivation now covering the county. In _Domesday Book_, under Cestrescire, these forests are often referred to, but we are left to conjecture what were the trees growing in them; doubtless there was the ash and the elm, and also “the monarch oak, sole king of forests all,” ready to hand for those who, in the elder days of the carpenter’s art, erected the dwellings from which those later buildings now being considered are either lineal or collateral descendants. The earliest extant of these may only carry us back some 500 years, but this had not only Norman but Anglo-Saxon progenitors. It is well known that the latter employed both in their churches and houses timber as their staple building material, and although all these have perished there remains the testimony of their language; the Saxon word “timbran” signified to build with wood, and builder meant carpenter. Their rude halls may be regarded as the origin of the old English timber-built houses. The oldest form of rectangular house was erected in “bays,” the simplest form of construction being the house of one bay. Two pairs of bent trees (whence the term “roof tree” seems an outcome) were set up in the ground about 16 feet apart, each pair making a sort of pointed arch, united at their apexes by a longitudinal beam. The gable end of many an old Cheshire cottage shows the persistence of this traditional type. Before bringing under review some few of the many specimens the county contains, a word or two with regard to their method of construction may not be out of place. Scarcity of stone and difficulties of transit account for this material being so sparingly used. Upon a few courses of stonework forming a plinth, horizontal beams were laid, and into these angle posts and intermediate uprights were framed. These carried the sill of the upper storey, whose floor joists were often made to project, producing the “overhang,” frequently coved, which is one of the most effective features of the style.