184 THE DEVELOPMENT OF ARCHITECTURE IN ESSEX.
ture of Gothic and Italian, known as Tudor, until in the time of the
Stuarts the architecture of Rome had again obtained its supremacy,
so that in the reign of Charles II, the most perfect specimen
we have of Roman architecture was erected in England, namely,
St. Paul's Cathedral.
It is curious that Englishmen brought up in the traditions of
Gothic architecture should have allowed themselves to have been
seduced from their old traditions, so as to have embraced classic
work, but what is more curious is that for 150 years they should
have abhorred and treated with every disrespect and contumely all
work associated with the Gothic period. However, we live now in
happier times, and there is no man who will venture to say a word
against the Gothic remains of our ancestors; on the contrary, even
with every desire to retain the old features of an old building, any
architect who ventures upon the path of restoration is assailed with an
amount of abuse which requires a strong mind to repel.
At the end of the fifteenth and the commencement of the
sixteenth century, a great change had come over the architecture of the
country by the re-introduction of brickwork. Hitherto all work had
been executed in stone. The arches and jambs of doors and
windows, the slopes of buttresses, the copings and strings of battle-
ments, had all been executed in stone, and the walls constructed of
pebbles and flints; but about 1500, probably from the extreme
difficulty and expense in obtaining stone to meet the demands of
the building mania which undoubtedly set in in this country at that
period, the architects were forced back upon native material, and as,
undoubtedly, the manufacture of bricks and tiles had never actually
ceased in this country, a fresh impulse was given to it by the fact
that it was found possible to manufacture moulded bricks, and also
that the rich red colour of the best bricks was capable of producing
an artistic effect. At any rate, from whatever cause arising, it is
clear that during the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Queen
Mary, and Elizabeth, the use of red brick was the fashionable
material, at any rate in this county, and it must be admitted
that the old red brick mansions of this and other counties, harmonise
with the surrounding scenery almost as well, if not better, than the
cold grey stonework of a former period.
There is a fashion in architecture, as well as in everything else,
and there cannot be a doubt but that the use of red bricks had
almost entirely superseded the use of stone and rubble during the