The general prevalence of stone in medieval buildings shews that it was considered to be the best material, and the great distance which much of it has been carried from the quarries, at a period when the imperfect means of transit must have rendered the conveyance exceedingly laborious, is a proof that our ancestors would encounter no slight difficulties to procure it; but there are some parts of the country so remote from any districts producing stone fit for ashlar work, that it can hardly be supposed that any available amount of labour could have succeeded in introducing a supply sufficient for all the purposes for which it would have been desired, and it may readily be imagined that, under such circumstances, bricks would have been resorted to as a substitute. Few tracts of country can, formerly, have been more difficult to supply with stone than some parts of the county of Essex.
It is scarcely credible that the use of bricks can, at any time, have been discontinued from a want of workmen able to make them, as less skill is required in their manufacture than in the most ordinary productions of the potter, a craftsman of kindred order, whose trade must have been in continual operation from the earliest times.
During the last summer the stone-work of the west window of the church at Danbury, in Essex, has been renewed, and in the progress of the work it was discovered that a rude relieving arch had been formed in the original structure, immediately above the head of the window, at the time of its first erection. This window was a plain but pure specimen of the Decorated style, and therefore not of later date than about the middle of the fourteenth century[1]. The arch just mentioned was constructed in part of bricks and tiles, all of which appeared to have been used in an earlier building, and most of them were considerably broken; several paving tiles, of the ordinary kind, were taken from it whole, but the ornamental patterns on them were nearly effaced, the surfaces
- ↑ The new stone-work is an exact copy of the old. The relieving arch was disturbed no farther than was necessary, to admit of the introduction of the new stone, and the greater part of it has been left intact.
taken from buildings in which it has been used, but these indications are sometimes so few and so inconsiderable, that a close examination is required to detect them. A single specimen is all which can be referred to on the south side of Brixworth church, and none is discoverable in any part which is accessible from the ground of the outer side of the south wall of Porchester castle, though it may be seen in the eastern wall; but as Roman mortar was not invariably made in this way, the absence of any appearance of the kind here spoken of will not necessarily disprove the Roman origin of the bricks.
