ESSEX BRICKS
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development. The newel stair at Nether Hall near Roydon shows
purpose-moulded brickwork of late fifteenth century (1480), while
the windows of the Chapel Barn at Little Coggeshall (which cannot
be later than early fourteenth century and may be thirteenth
century) have similar moulded brickwork of one simple order. It
is usually easy to distinguish between purpose-moulded brick and
that cut to shape, when in position, with the brick-axe (or, in a
rather less noble technique, filed or rubbed to shape with float-
stone). The brick core, often black or not so well burnt as the
outside, is exposed on the edges of the moulding if the brick has
been cut to shape from its original rectangular form, but if the
brick was moulded in its final shape all the outside surface will, of
course, be uniform in colour and texture. This distinction can well
be seen at Faulkbourne Hall, Essex (1494).
The fine moulded brickwork of Cromwell House, Highgate, in
North London, built about 1650, is a good example of the value of
this technique when wisely used with restraint. By mid-seventeenth
century over a hundred years had passed since architects had
begun to relieve the master-builder of one of his functions; up to
about 1520 he had both designed the building and built it, perhaps
simultaneously in all but the major features. Elaborate brick orna-
ment is built into Shelley Hall (1508) and Gifford's Hall (1520),
both less than two miles over the county border into Suffolk.
Bricks were rubbed also to remove irregularities of size and to
enable very thin mortar joints to be made, almost like stone-
masons' joints. This work, using specially liquid lime mortar, was
known as "rubbed and gauged" work and appears in some of the
architecturally-important surfaces of seventeenth century and
eighteenth century buildings, and is seen also in Wren's fine brick
alcoves at Hampton Court.
I do not intend to venture far over the borderline from Bricks to
Brickwork, but I must indicate how the large irregularities of early
bricks made necessary the wide mortar joints we find in early
brickwork, sometimes as much as one inch or more in thickness
which fortuitously gave so generous an appearance to the old
walls of 400 or 500 years ago. In no period prior to the seventeenth
century do we find the mean, thin joints which are so characteristic
of late nineteenth century and early twentieth century brickwork.
About 1630 joints began to be a little reduced from their former
great thickness and by mid-seventeenth century were perhaps
fin. instead of 1in.-11/4in. Although thin joints are found in the
work of Wren and later architects, their use is usually intentionally
planned for an architectural purpose and it is justified to this
limited extent.
The mortar used throughout medieval times and down to mid-
nineteenth century was a lime-sand mortar, usually most carefully