[The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 by Elizabeth Gaskell]@TWC D-Link bookThe Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 CHAPTER IV 11/26
This new part was devoted expressly to schoolrooms, dormitories, &c.; and after the school was removed to Casterton, it was used for a bobbin-mill connected with the stream, where wooden reels were made out of the alders, which grow profusely in such ground as that surrounding Cowan Bridge.
This mill is now destroyed.
The present cottage was, at the time of which I write, occupied by the teachers' rooms, the dinner- room and kitchens, and some smaller bedrooms.
On going into this building, I found one part, that nearest to the high road, converted into a poor kind of public-house, then to let, and having all the squalid appearance of a deserted place, which rendered it difficult to judge what it would look like when neatly kept up, the broken panes replaced in the windows, and the rough-cast (now cracked and discoloured) made white and whole.
The other end forms a cottage, with the low ceilings and stone floors of a hundred years ago; the windows do not open freely and widely; and the passage upstairs, leading to the bedrooms, is narrow and tortuous: altogether, smells would linger about the house, and damp cling to it.
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