Note 112 — Chapter VI · THE SUMMER HOUSE AT OULTON

Richard Ford was almost as interesting a person as Borrow himself, though a much more amenable. The discoverer of Velazquez was, at the time of their acquaintance, living in Heavitree mainly because his brother James had a prebendal stall in Exeter Cathedral. There he had built himself a house, in which he had expressed his own taste in architecture and decoration. His long series of articles in the Quarterly Review began with an architectural subject, the “cob-walls” of Devonshire—a mixture of “mud” and straw, said to be the warmest, and among the most durable of all walls. Many examples of this form of building remain in the neighbourhood of Exeter. Ford traced a connection between the mud walls of Devon and the concrete used by the Moors and Phœnicians. Ford visited Borrow, at Oulton, in 1844. He was thrice married, the last time in 1851, to Mary, only daughter of Sir A. Molesworth, the head of the distinguished Cornish family of that name. Mrs. Ford still survives, and the author has the privilege of acknowledging her kindly interest and valuable assistance in his inquiries into the relations between Borrow and her husband.