with houses. The public buildings were black and hideous to a child’s eye; and the streets were narrow and dirty; the brick dwellings being shabby, one and all, and grimed with smoke. The number of names of convents, priories, friaries, chapels and the like, was very striking, while the Castle (the New Castle) built by the son of the Conqueror, frowned black above the river. The number of religious houses was due to the holy well which was found at the head of the ravine before the place was a town at all. The well was a place of pilgrimage, and monasteries naturally grew up round it. Kings of England rested in them, and queens of Scotland took refuge there on occasion. The place assumed a new aspect after the discovery of the coal, which lay under the grass of the Tyne valley. A great commerce by the port of Shields grew up; the glass manufacture was established; and at the opening of our century, the population, somewhat under 40,000, was busy and tolerably prosperous, but ill-lodged, dirty, and unattractive in appearance and manner accordingly.
When we children were taken for our daily walk in the summer of 1809, we had to pass through certain streets before we could get to the moor and other open spaces of country; and we must have sometimes met Richard Grainger going to or from school,—a round-faced, rosy, good-humoured, quiet charity-boy of eleven, in a green badge coat. His father, a porter on the quay, had married a woman from Gibraltar; and they lived in two small rooms in High Friar Chare (lane or narrow street.) The father died when his children were infants; and their only chance of education was from the charity schools of the town. Richard went to that of St. Andrew’s, where he studied Tinwell’s arithmetic, the Bible, the spelling-book, and Tom Thumb. The mother, a stout woman, steady at her needle, is still remembered by customers who employed her to graft stockings, get up silk stockings and muslins, and make gloves. If she did such things in her latter days, it was for her own pleasure; for Richard enabled her to live as she liked.
The first incident which he could recal as turning his mind towards the work of his life was an improvement which was made in the town in 1810. The shambles had till then been in the open street, but the decency of a covered market in the Dean (the dene or ravine in the middle of the town) impressed the future architect very deeply. He was presently apprenticed to a house-carpenter, named Brown, to whom he eventually gave a good deal of employment. The quiet, contented, thoughtful Methodist apprentice was much prized by his master, and noticed by other people. For his part, his mind was full of a great idea which he was always pondering, at work and at play. The nunnery beside the holy well had become a great mischief. It occupied twelve acres of ground,—not now as a convent, but in the form of a mansion, with gardens and plantations, in which nothing could grow for the smoke. A high wall surrounded this large area; and the streets were actually made circuitous on account of it. Charles I. had slept in that mansion: but it could not stand in everybody’s way for ever for that reason: and Richard’s dream was of what might be made of the town if that space could be utilised, and the winding streets swept away and re-made. While still a boy he made his plan, and saw in prospect (for he fully intended to accomplish his scheme) the terraces, squares, new streets and public buildings which he meant to build, and to face with dressed stone, in the place of dingy brick. At spare times he slipped down to places where he could examine the quality of the stone he meant to quarry for his works. He traced the extent of this stone, and determined to prove to his townsmen how much better it was to build houses with than brick. He was probably unaware of the praise of Augustus,—that he had found Rome brick and left it marble; but it was precisely his own ambition to turn his native town of dingy brick into stone. His first bit of work in pulling down old brick walls was visited afterwards with much curiosity. As soon as he was out of his time, he and his elder brother, George, who was a bricklayer, pulled down and rebuilt a small house next their mother’s. He owed his next opportunity to an opulent member of the Methodist body to which he belonged. Though wondered at for employing “a raw lad like Grainger,” this Mr. Batson entrusted to him the building of some houses in Higham Place. Richard was worthy of the trust. He was up at three or four in the morning, and worked till nine at night,—giving his whole mind to the business; and it was thoroughly well done.
He had the stimulus of wishing to marry; and he did marry young, and extremely well. His wife Rachel was a class-mate at chapel, and so far well-connected that she had eventually a fortune of 5000l. But that was the least of the good things she brought to Richard. She made his home a place of rest and comfort, and moreover kept his accounts and managed his correspondence. She was a woman of taste as well as business-capacity; and her counsel was as beneficial to him in his work abroad as her affection in his rest at home.
His first speculation on his own resources was building two houses in Percy Street,—of brick as yet. Then he built a whole street, except eight houses; and it was extolled as something splendid from its width and regularity. Grainger smiled at the popular admiration; for he thought the houses ordinary enough, with their plain brick outsides. He had nothing to do with the plan, or it would have been very different. This he presently proved by creating a handsome square of stone-houses, opening out of the new brick street. Eldon Square was begun in 1826,—and all but four of the houses, and the handsome club-house in the centre of one side, were his work. He had experience here of some of the vexations which haunt builders at every turn. As soon as the houses were finished, it was discovered that some of the American timber employed in the roofs was infested by bugs. I suppose they were got rid of; for the speculation succeeded so well as to bring larger enterprises after it. His friend and attorney advised him to retire on the 20,000l. he had realised: but Grainger produced plans and estimates for a noble crescent and terrace, to be built
