166
QUEEN ELIZABETH'S LODGE, CHINGFORD.
By JAMES CUBITT, F.R.I.B.A.
[When it was decided, by permission of the Corporation, to
form a Museum in the Lodge, Mr. Cubitt very kindly made a careful
examination of the building and wrote the following Report, which
will be interesting to all visitors to the Museum and may be taken as
supplementary to Mr. W. C. Waller's paper, "Two Forest Lodges,"
printed in The Essex Naturalist, vol. vii., p. 82.—Ed.]
THE whole of this building is remarkable for the size of its
timbers and the solidity of its construction. It differs, too,
from most wooden houses of the same period by the absence of over-
hanging storeys and similar projections on the outside. Before
restoration, the main timbers seem to have been concealed, at least
externally, and old prints show but few windows, and those square-
headed casements.
In its present state the Lodge contains no visible trace of
distinctively Elizabethan detail. To all appearance it dates from
about the end of the fifteenth century. It is oblong on plan,
measuring 30 feet by 20 internally, with a separate staircase 15 feet
square. The stairs are wide and easy of ascent ; they are in short
flights with frequent landings. What in ordinary cases would be
the central well-hole is enclosed, not by a handrail, but by a
partition, which forms a vertical flue or shaft, reaching from the
lowest storey nearly to the roof. This enclosure may have been
only a special arrangement for safety, though uses to which it could
be put will readily suggest themselves. In some old Scottish build-
ings, such as Glamis Castle, a shaft or well in a similar position was
provided to hold the lines and weights of a clock.
The Lodge contains three storeys. The lowest is occupied by
living rooms and store places; the next, there is every reason to
believe, consisted originally of one large apartment, though it has
long been divided into three rooms and a passage. But the
partitions which separate these are of the roughest kind, quite un-
like the architecturally-designed timber work of the original building.
They have no structural connection with it, and the handsomely-
moulded beams which originally carried the ceiling were evidently
meant to cover an undivided room. On the staircase landing at this
level, there is a late Gothic door-frame with a low "four-centred"