manship is very good, and it will be seen by the sections that some nicety of hand was required in its execution. Three of these quatrefoils were used as ornaments in the upper part of the inside of the north wall of the chancel of Frittenden church, in Kent[1]; they were built into the wall, but the centre parts were left hollow to the depth of the inner rims, by which means a strong shadow was produced, which rendered them highly effective as architectural decorations. The whole of them were more or less injured, and, as it has been found requisite to rebuild the wall in which they were placed, the most perfect of them has been made complete by an adaptation of the fragments of the others, and is now built into the upper part of the eastern wall of the chancel.
Considerable uncertainty prevails as to the extent to which the making of bricks and tiles was practised in this country during the middle ages, and it has even been questioned whether bricks, properly so called, were made at all subsequently to the time of the Romans, until the introduction of the Perpendicular style of architecture[2]; it appears, indeed, to be very generally held to be indisputable, that the fragments of thin bricks, which are frequently found built into the walls of medieval structures of earlier date, are all of Roman make. That this opinion is, in the main, correct, as applied to the greater part of the kingdom, may be readily admitted, but the few facts which are here brought forward, seem to shew conclusively that it is not equally true in reference to particular districts[3].
- ↑ It may be allowable to take the present opportunity of recording the discovery of several lumps of Roman concrete, in the foundations of some of the walls of this church which have been recently rebuilt; they were compounded with small fragments of brick, and were all of similar composition, as if they had originally formed part of the same mass. There is no situation likely to have been occupied by any Roman building, nearer to Frittenden than the range of hills on the north side of the adjoining parish of Headcorn, and as the stone, of which the walls were built, came from that district, it is probable that these remnants were brought from thence. Perhaps the stone quarry occupied the site of a Roman building, and the substratum of a floor was found sufficiently consolidated to serve for materials for the church.
- ↑ That bricks were in use at a much earlier period, is proved by their employment in the walls of Little Wenham Hall, Suffolk, (a description of this house, and of the bricks with which it is built, is given in the Oxford "Glossary of Architecture," under "Domestic Architecture," and " Brick"). At whatever time the manufacture of paving tiles, and roofing tiles was practised, it must have been in the power of the workmen who made them to make bricks also, as they would require less skill.
- ↑ The best test for proving that bricks used in this manner are of Roman make, is found in the remnants of the original mortar adhering to them. It is well known that Roman mortar was commonly made with an admixture of pounded brick, and small portions of it are generally to be found adhering t» some of the materials
