Throughout England the older farmhouses and buildings are full of interest, not only to architects, but to many who are in sympathy with good and simple construction, and have taken the pleasant trouble to learn enough about it to understand how and why the buildings were reared. And in these restless days of hurry and strain and close competition in trades, and bad, cheap work, it is good to pass a quiet hour in wandering about among structures set up four or even five centuries ago by these grand building monks. The present writer had just such a pleasure not long ago in the South of England, where a large group of monastic farm buildings stands within sound of the wash of the sea. They are on sloping ground, inclosing three sides of a square; a wall, backed with trees, forming the fourth side. On the upper level is a great barn; a much greater, the tithe barn, being opposite it on the lower. Buildings containing stables, cattle-sheds and piggeries connect the two. Between these and the wall opposite is a spacious yard; across the middle is a raised causeway dividing the yard into two levels. [Illustration: CLEEVE PRIOR: SUNFLOWERS FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF MR. JAMES CROFTS POWELL] The barns are of grand masonry. Some of the stones, next above the plinth--a feature that adds so much to the dignity of the building, and by its additional width, to its solidity--measure as much as four feet six inches in length by twenty inches in height. In every fifth course is a row of triangular holes for ventilation, such as every brick or stone-built barn must have. They are cleverly arranged as to the detail of the manner of their building, and though only intended for use have a distinctly ornamental value. Where the walls rise at the gable ends they are corbelled out at the eaves and carried up some two feet above the line of the rafters, finishing in a wrought stone capping, thus stopping the thatch. For the buildings are, and always have been, thatched with straw, the ground around being good corn-land, a rich calcareous loam. There is a delightful sense of restfulness about these fine solid buildings, built for the plainest needs of the community of the material nearest to hand, in the simply right and therefore most beautiful way. With no intentional ornament, they have the beauty of sound, strong structure and unconsciously right proportion. There is also a satisfaction in the plain evidence of delight in good craftsmanship, and in the unsparing use of both labour and material. CONDOVER