Page 89 - Living Epistles

Hardey Residence at top/Drainside in Lower Image
"Drainside," as the neighborhood was termed, could not under any
circumstances have been considered inviting. It consisted of a double row of
workmen's cottages facing each other across a narrow canal, connecting the
country district of Cottingham with the docks and estuary of the Humber.
The canal was nothing but a deep ditch into which Drainside people were in
the habit of casting their rubbish, to be carried away in part whenever the
tide rose high enough. It was separated from the town by desolate spaces of
building-land, across which ran a few ill-lighted streets ending in makeshift
wooden bridges. The cottages, like peas in a pod, were all the same size and
shape down both sides of the long row. They followed the windings of the
Drain for half a mile or more, each one having a door and two windows, one
above the other. The door opened straight into the kitchen, and a steep
stairway led to the room above. A very few were double cottages with a
window to right and left of the door and two rooms overhead.

On the city side of the canal, one of these larger dwellings stood at a corner
opposite The Founder's Arms, a countrified public-house whose lights were
useful as a landmark on dark nights, shining across the mud and water of
the Drain. The cottage, known as 30 Cottingham Terrace, was tenanted by
the family of a seafaring man, whose visits home were few and far between.
Mrs. Finch and her children occupied the kitchen and upper part of the
house, and the downstairs room on the left as one entered was let at a rental
of three shillings a week. It was too high a charge, seeing the whole house
went for little more. But the lodger in whom we are interested did not grudge
it, especially when he found how much it meant to the good woman whose
remittances from her husband came none too regularly.

Mrs. Finch was a true Christian and delighted to have "the young Doctor"
under her roof. She did her best no doubt to make the little chamber clean
and comfortable, polishing the fireplace opposite the window and making up
the bed in the corner farthest from the door. A plain deal table and a chair or
two completed the appointments. The whole room was less than twelve feet
square and did not need much furniture. It was on a level with the ground
and opened familiarly out of the kitchen. From the window one looked across
the narrowest strip of "garden" to the Drain beyond, whose mud banks
afforded a playground for the children of the neighborhood.

Whatever it may have been in summer, toward the close of November, when
Hudson Taylor made it his home, Drainside must have seemed dreary