Transcribed from the 1913 Hodder and Stoughton edition ,email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
It was a bright, hot, August Saturday in the market town of Eastthorpe,in the eastern Midlands, in the year 1840. Eastthorpe lay aboutfive miles on the western side of the Fens, in a very level countryon the banks of a river, broad and deep, but with only just sufficientfall to enable its long-lingering waters to reach the sea. Itwas an ancient market town, with a six-arched stone bridge, and witha High Street from which three or four smaller and narrower streetsconnected by courts and alleys diverged at right angles. In themiddle of the town was the church, an immense building, big enough tohold half Eastthorpe, and celebrated for its beautiful spire and itspeal of eight bells. Round the church lay the churchyard, fringedwith huge elms, and in the Abbey Close, as it was called, which wasthe outer girdle of the churchyard on three sides, the fourth side ofthe square being the High Street, there lived in 1840 the principaldoctor, the lawyer, the parson, and two aged gentlewomen with some property,who were daughters of one of the former partners in the bank, had beenborn in Eastthorpe, and had scarcely ever quitted it. Here alsowere a young ladies’ seminary and an ancient grammar school forthe education of forty boys, sons of freemen of the town. Thehouses in the Close were not of the same class as the rest; they weremostly old red brick, with white sashes, and they all had gardens, long,narrow, and shady, which, on the south side of the Close, ran down tothe river. One of these houses was even older, black-timbered,gabled, plastered, the sole remains, saving the church, of Eastthorpeas it was in the reign of Henry the Eighth.
Just beyond the church, going from the bridge, the High Street wasso wide that the houses on either side were separated by a space ofover two hundred feet. This elongated space was the market-place. In the centre was the Moot Hall, a quaint little building, supportedon oak pillars, and in the shelter underneath the farmers assembledon market day. All round the Moot Hall, and extending far up anddown the street, were cattle-pens and sheep-pens, which were never removed. Most of the shops were still bow-windowed, with small panes of glass,but the first innovation, indicative of the new era at hand, had justbeen made. The druggist, as a man of science and advanced ideas,had replaced his bow-window with plate-glass, had put a cornice overit, had stuccoed his bricks, and had erected a kind of balustrade ofstucco, so as to hide as much as possible the attic windows, which lookedover, meekly protesting. Nearly opposite the Moot Hall was theBell Inn, the principal inn in the town. There were other inns,respectable enough, such as the Bull, a little higher up, patronisedby the smaller commercial travellers and farmers, but the entrance passageto the Bull had sand on the floor, and carriers made it a house of call. To the Bell the two coaches came which went through Eastthorpe, andthere they changed horses. Both the Bull and the Bell had marketdinners, but at the Bell the charge was three-and-sixpence; sherry wasoften drunk, and there the steward to the Honourable Mr. Eaton, theprincipal landowner, always met the tenants. The Bell was Toryand the Bull was Whig, but no stranger of respectability, Whig or Tory,visiting Eastthorpe could possibly hesitate about going to the Bell,with its large gilded device projecting over the pathway, with its broadarchway at the side always freshly gravelled, and its handsome balconyon the first floor, from which the Tory county candidates, during electiontimes, addressed the free and independent electors and cattle.
Eastthorpe was a malting town, and down by the wate