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 



