" As for the chambers and
studies, not only were they destitute of anything in the shape of
stoves or fire-places, but their walls were absolutely bare, while in
the upper chambers there were not even lath and plaster between the
tiles and the beams of the roof. It is to us almost incomprehensible
how vitality could have been kept up in the winter under such
conditions. The cold must have been dreadful.
At four only of five earlier and smaller colleges was there any fire-
place in the hall, and the barbaric braziers in which first charcoal
and afterwards coke was burned, were actually the only heating
apparatus known in the immense halls of Trinity and St. John's till
within the last twenty years! The magnificent hall of Trinity
actually retained till 1866 the brazier _which had been in use for
upwards of 160 years!_ The clumsy attempt to fight the bitter cold
which was usual in our mediaeval churches and manor-houses, by
strewing the stone floor with rushes, was carried out too in the
college halls, and latterly, instead of rushes, sawdust was used, at
least in Trinity. "It was laid on the floor at the beginning of
winter, and turned over with a rake as often as the upper surface
became dirty. Finally, when warm weather set in, it was removed, the
colour of charcoal!" Well might the late Professor Sedgwick, in
commenting upon this practice, exclaim; "The dirt was sublime in
former years!"
Yet in the earliest times a lavatory was provided in the college
halls, and a towel of eight or nine yards long, which at Trinity, as
late as 1612, was hung on a hook--the refinement of hanging a towel
on a _roller_ does not appear to have been thought of.
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