Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/599

 12 s. viii. JUNE is, i92i.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 493 one of them in The Manchester City News Notes and Queries, vol. iv. (1882), 288. | A previous inspector had charged him for j a small grid lighting a coal-cellar and sug- gested a keyhole might be a light. The question usually put was, " Have you any extra windows since last year ? " Internal windows lighting another room had to be charged for. The Acts should be referred to for details. R. S. B. I was born in 1845, in a Stilton-cheese- making district, and I well remember seeing the words "Cheese Room" over one of the windows of several farm - houses where we used to visit. When, as quite ! a small boy, I asked the meaning of I this, I was told that formerly, when glass windows were taxed, those of cheese rooms were exempt ; and my informant (herself a . Stilton-cheese maker) added that this was | because of the fondness of gentlemen for that particular kind of cheese ! The tax was not in force then nor during my memory. C. C. B. I remember that, in 1859, there was, over the window of a building in the yard at Winwick Grammar School, Lancashire, an old worn label of wood, upon which was painted either " Dairy " L or " Milk House," I forget which. J. P. R. Harvington Hall Farm, about three miles from Kidderminster, and situate opposite the old hall from which it takes its name, has, or had a few years ago, " Cheese Room" on a board above an upper window, also " Dairy " over a window below in the latter case painted on the window frame. B. J. L. See ' oems ' of Walter Savage Landor, 1795, p. 123, ' On the Window Tax ' : 'Tis well our courtly patriots have No window in their breast : How d-mn-bly these dogs would rave To find themselves assest. The window tax had been increased in 1784, STEPHEN WHEELER. I used, about the years 1885-1887, to live at the Manor House, Seend, Wiltshire. A near neighbour had a house and on one of the lintels of the window was painted " Dairy." It is probably there now. It was a relic of the window tax. BLAIR COCHRANE. 1 thought light in a cheese room was always excluded. E. E. COPE. W. Toone ('Chr. Hist.' i. 650), under date Feb. 5, 1747, writes : His Majesty went down to the House of Peers, and gave the Royal assent to the following bills : An act for repealing the several rates and duties upon houses, windows and lights ; and for granting to his Majesty other rates and duties upon houses, windows and lights ; and for raising the sum of 4,400,OOOL by annuities to ,be charged on the said rates or duties. . . . JOHN B. WAINE WRIGHT. "PARLIAMENT CLOCK" (12 S. viii. 451). In 1797 Pitt imposed a tax on private clocks at 5s. per clock per annum (37 Geo. III. c. 108), with the result that many people parted with their timepieces. To counterbalance this clocks were brought into more prominence by being placed where people might see them, such as inside inns, <fcc., while the proprietors of places where the public congregated, and where no clock existed, bought one, and it is these latter that are the genuine Act of Parliament clocks. The reason that so many so-called Act of Parliament clocks were made long before the Act was passed is accounted for by the fact that they were used, after the passing of the Act, more for the benefit of the public than the household. The Act was soon repealed. To quote a letter which appeared in The Times on Dec. 1, 1919 : They are normally long-case hanging clocks with dials of a diameter about two-thirds the length of the case. The dials are either circular or octagonal, they are painted either white with black figures or black with gilt figures, and are never glazed. The pendulum beats seconds, as in the ordinary " grandfather " clock. The case is usually rectangular with a wedge-shaped projection at the bottom, but sometimes it is banjo-shaped and sometimes there are shaped ear-pieces at the junction of the dial and the case. It is made of soft wood, either roughly painted or decorated with black or green lacquer. Thomas Hill of Fleet Street made some particularly attractive specimens in black lacquer, with the diameter of the dial considerably greater than the length of the case, with a pendulum that beats 90 beats to the minute. These clocks were more generally used in the south than in the north of England, and have often been sold by auction in London at between 6 and 10 apiece. One was to have been sold at the Oundle Rectory, Northants, on Nov. 26, 1919, by Messrs. Hampton and Sons on behalf of Mr. Herbert Smith, but was withdrawn at