Clyffe (sic Cliffe) at Hoo Rectory House

256 CLYFFE-AT-HOO RECTORY HOUSE. end of the hall had been perverted to a kitchen, and there we crowbarred out the three ancient buttery arches, from behind a mass of brick-chimney and fireplace masonry. From some broken stone newel-steps which were found close by, it is thought that the smallest of these three arches led to a stone turret staircase, giving access to rooms over the ancient offices, which were to the west of the hall. At the east end of the hall, on the south side, is a lofty stone arch with roll moulding, having a peculiar stop. The other arch, in the east wall of the hall, led to the withdrawing-room behind the high table on the dais. The fireplace in this wall is quite modern, having been cut into the old wall in 1870-71. The withdrawing-room probably is much as it ever was, except the window, which was so mutilated and altered at various times that its plan and exact design could not be made out, the old jamb-stones being dislocated and built in at random; it was therefore " restored " as a four-lighted, shouldered arch window. The door opposite to this window was the old front door in 1869. The doorway into the eastern room, now the study, contains the remains of one stone jamb of the ancient doorway; the arch stones with roll moulding having been found, displaced and fractured, under the study floor. The fireplace in the withdrawingroom is ancient, but the chimney-piece is modern, the design of it, as of the other chimney-pieces in the groundfloor rooms, having been taken from an ancient fireplace of the thirteenth century in a house at Charney, Berks, figured in Domestic Architecture of the Middle Ages, by T. Hudson Turner: Oxford, Parker, 1851. The study fireplace is modern in place and design. The old fireplace (if there was one in this room) was in the west end. What the windows were cannot now be determined, unless they were like the one in the south side of it, which was a narrow loop, low in height, and with widely splayed jambs; probably this room and those above it were storerooms for the chambers on their respective floors. This room had been terribly abused; it had had a doorway cut into it on the north side, and had been used for a wood and tool house. As to the upper rooms, what was above the