254 THE ESSEX NATURALIST
(iii) Bricks are durable and their re-use in buildings much later than
the period of their manufacture is rather frequent (or was, until
the heavy hand of local building regulations descended on the
countryside) ;
(iv) A mixture of sizes, due, for instance, to the pulling down of a
sixteenth century wall to ground level in the eighteenth century,
and the subsequent use of some of the sixteenth century bricks
with new eighteenth century bricks in alternate courses. But
sometimes, a lot of undersize eighteenth century bricks may be
used up in an unimportant work and they look at first sight much
earlier than they really are.
The only guide in these cases is experience, and that instinct for
texture and the more subtle characteristics which transcends mere
systematic knowledge. I have come across two such puzzles re-
cently:
Firstly, a wall in Maldon in which many kinds of bricks are represented ;
the latest looks like late seventeenth century and this gives the key.
The wall is that of the Plume Library, built in 1704-5, and, as far
as I know, not refaced later.
Secondly, an arch of the nave of St. Mary's Church, Polstead, eight
miles north of Colchester, built about 1160, therefore a late Norman
structure.
The thin bricks cannot be early Tudor, for they have been cut to
transform a round Norman Arch into the then more fashionable,
yet still pre-Tudor, fourteenth century form of arch. It would
seem that they are clearly either Roman (as some suggest) or Norman,
in which case they are half a century earlier even than the Little
Coggeshall Abbey bricks. There is some re-used Roman material
in the church, beyond all doubt, but these bricks do not seem to
me to be Roman. The Polstead Bricks are 10in.-11in. long x
5in.-7in. wide x 13/4in. thick, some are dark brown but more are red
of various shades ; they are rough in texture, but I think better
than the Little Coggeshall Bricks. There is no agreed answer to
this problem ; they may be twelfth century bricks made in small
quantity on the site for the special purpose of those arches, as I
believe, or they might be Roman.
With this example to show how much there is yet to be known
of East Anglian bricks and their origin, I conclude in the hope that
some members may study further and contribute to our knowledge
of an important, traditional Essex craft.