Old Hall, St. Ogg's

Old Hall, St. Ogg's,The scene of the bazaar which is the culmination of Maggie Tulliver's social career. "It was the Normans who began to build that fine old hall, which is like the town telling of the thoughts and hands of widely-sundered generations; but it is all so old that we look with loving pardon at its inconsistencies, and are well content that they who built the stone oriel, and they who built the Gothic facade and towers of finest small brickwork with the refoil ornament, and the windows and battlements defined with stone, did not sacrilegiously pull down the ancient half-timbered body, with its oak - roofed banqueting-hall." "The fine old hall, with its open roof and carved oaken rafters, and great oaken foldingdoors, and light shed down from a height on the many-coloured show beneath: a very quaint place, with broad faded stripes painted on the walls, and here and there a show of heraldic animals of a bristly, long-snouted character, the cherished emblems of a noble family once the seigniors of this now civic hall. A grand arch, cut in the upper wall at one end, surmounted an oaken orchestra, with an open room behind it . . . Near the great arch over the orchestra was the stone oriel with painted glass, which was one of the venerable inconsistencies of the old hall." The original of the Old Hall, St. Ogg's, is the Old Hall, Gainsborough, the ancient residence of the lords of the manor of Gainsburgh, an interesting specimen of an old baronial hall. (For a history and description of this building, which is still standing, see Stark, History and Antiquities of Gainsburgh.)

<em>The Mill on the Floss</em>

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