Certainly one of the finest things Ipswich has to show is the wonderful old place in the old Butter Market, known still as "Sparrowe's House," although the last of the Sparrowes who inhabited here has long since gone to his home in the family vault within the Church of St Lawrence, where, over their tomb-house, may yet be read the punning motto, _Nidus Passerum_, "a nest of sparrows." These Sparrowes seem to have been endowed with some of the attributes of the cuckoo, for _they_ did not build the house that bears their name. It owes its origin to a certain George Copping, who built it in 1567, but alterations and additions made in the Jacobean period give its architectural history a span of over a century. The woodwork of the bay windows and the grandly-projecting eaves, together with that of the shop premises, was added at the time. But the great glory of "Sparrowe's House" is its decorative plaster-work in high relief, which profusely covers the exterior with garlands of flowers and fruits and with quaint devices emblematic of the four quarters of the globe. Here Europa, cornucopia in one hand, book and sceptre in the other, sits with her bull, who might be taken for an elephant with half his trunk shorn off; here, on another bay, a podgy plaster relief typifies Asia, with palm-tree and a building of Oriental character in the background; followed by Africa, a nude nigger holding an umbrella over his head and sitting on a shark, at which four tiny figures at a respectful distance express astonishment, while nearer at hand a wicked-looking bird of quite uncertain family roosts on a something that greatly resembles a battered meat tin. America is typified by an Indian in a feather head-dress which represents his entire wardrobe. He stands with bow and arrows, attended by a dog with a damaged smile. A very beautiful representation of the Royal Arms occupies one of the spaces between the windows, and other devices show the pelican in her piety; Atlas supporting the world; a classical scene in which a shepherd bows as gracefully as the artist in plaster could make him to a rural nymph; St George and the Dragon, and several smaller subjects. XXXII