2.
WHAT DID THE NORMANS DO WITH ROMAN TILE?
Many Essex buildings, and some in East
Anglia, have re-used Roman tile incorporated
in their walls. For instance, Colchester
Castle (c. 1086) used some of the ruined
Roman material freely available to Norman
builders at that time. The Saxons had
pointed the way when the "Chapel on the
Wall" at Bradwell was constructed about
630 A.D. from the ruined Roman Fort of Othona.
The Saxons seem not to have cared to live
in Roman ruins, perhaps from fear of ghosts,
a very real fear in superstitious and devout
early Christians, or perhaps because the great
Roman structures (even in ruins) may have
represented to them an alian, and therefore
disliked, culture. There is some evidence,
at present only tentative, that the Saxons
could make tiles so like the Roman material
that, for instance at Brixworth in Notting-
hamshire, only elaborate thermoluminescence
tests have recently been able to distinguish
between them. But as a generality it is true
to say that the Saxons did not go in for brick-
making and it is not long ago that this would
also have been said of the Normans. Now we
know that, towards the end of the twelth
century, Little Coggeshall Abbey was built of
tiles undoubtedly made locally.
I say "tiles" and not "bricks" because
it is important to distinguish between them,
if the differences in their manufacturing
processes are to be taken into account. My
criterion is: if the sum of the two larger
dimensions (length + breadth) be divided by
the smallest dimension (thickness) then if
the quotient exceed 8 the object is a TILE,