Genealogy of the Olmsted family in America : embracing the ...

A Visit to Olmsted Hall 435
received with open arms, given the front bedroom and the sitting-room, and
all our demands Ustened to with unqualified respect. The chief ones were
that we should have plenty of hot water for ablutions, that a chair bed for
one of us should be made up in the bedroom, and that our coffee should be
fresh roast and ground, and free from chicory.
Devoutly thankful at getting our rooms so easily and quickly, when we
might have had a good deal of trouble, Haverhill not being a town where
rooms are much in request, we started out for our six-mile walk to the house
through Bumpsted Helion, after having been given an itinerary, and a hastily
drawn map by Mrs. Griggs at the P. 0., and one of her nice male customers.
Haverhill is a pretty place of over 4,000 inhabitants, and chiefly consists of
one long, straggling street. Some of the houses are very quaint and oldfashioned,
and the church (XVIth century I think—restored) is large and
well proportioned.
The nearest way to Olmsted Hall Farm is through Bumpsted Helion in
Essex. The house is ecclesiastically in Bumpsted Helion, but civilly, if that
is the right way to express it, in Castle Camps, Cambridge. The country we
walked through was too glorious for description, typical English rural scenery,
unspoilt by factories, modern inventions, and untouched by trippers. The
roads are only fair, and wind about most distractingly, making the journey
about double what it would be "as the crow flies."
When we had passed through Bumpsted Helion, we sat down on a heap
of granite stones at the road side and demolished more food. It was refreshing,
after London, to be greeted by every passing Hodge, and everyone of whom
we asked the way was so obliging and affable. We especially liked a sweet
shepherd, who was in charge of a large flock, and a beguiling little country
boy of about thirteen, glowing with health and bursting with communicativeness.
My friend was in excellent form after her three months in the
country and at the seaside, but after my six weeks of town I was not, and I was
a bit disheartened by the discouraging remarks of the cottagers: "You've a
good step yet to go; a matter of 2J^ miles, Miss." " Why, 'tis qiiite 6
miles out o' 'Averhill," etc.
The cottages we passed were half timbered, but covered over with plaster
or whitewash, and in most cases were thatched. I pictured John of Olmsted
riding out with his retainers to hunt or to hawk, and to pay his feudal dues to
the Earl of Oxford. Perhaps Matilda, " Uxor ejus," rode along on her palfrey
attended by her women to hear vespers chanted in the little church, as it then
was of Bumpsted Helion, or to carry cordials and medicines to the sick poor
in their hovels.
We passed Perry Appleton farm, where Mr. Charlie Chapman, the present
tenant of O. H. F., lives, until he takes unto himself a wife and takes up residence
in the place itself; and then the Hall dawned on our view, a long, low,
half timbered place, the timbered parts covered over, but faintly showing
through the plaster or whitewash, with a discoloured reddish-brown tiled roof,
delightfully wobbly in outline, with a leaning red chimney-stack, which I
should think the next strong gale would bring down.
There is a dark red Renaissance doorway at the end of the garden path
which divides the front lawn in two. Round the house is a moat, that is, it
is now only round three sides and only partly filled with water. (Rats are