Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/416

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Walks in the Black Country

in which the flesh of the outer wall does not cover the bones but only fills the spaces between them It is forty feet in front length, with two unique stories embellished with the quaint, elaborate carvings of the olden days. The upper story juts out over the lower, and projects still further three large balcony windows, that look like three great eyes, each with six pupils, staring out of the sloping roof through a pair of highly ornamented goggles. The lower story, on each side of the massive doorway, is a kind of post-and-rail fence of glass and wood, or a long window divided into nine compartments, with headings and sidings wrought with the best genius of the wood carvers in the great Henry's time. In a word, it would make an excellent subject for a painter of ancient architecture. Its founder must have been a man of eccentric ideas. His programme of benevolence was only to house in this building five men and one woman, allowing them only five pence apiece weekly. But as the property he left for the support of the institution increased in value, and other donations were added, it enlarged its benefactions, and there are now thirty-seven aged women recipients of the charity, seventeen of whom reside in the building. The whole receive now four shillings a week each, with a ton of coals yearly.

A workhouse sprouting up out of the extensive