12 



enough to see from the beyfiuniug to the end of 

 those enormous buildings ; but such buiklings 

 were not designed as a whole. No doubt 

 diagrams were carefully prepared laying down 

 the general lines to be pursued. Of course on 

 a huge building the work was capable of 

 division into units ; these would be care- 

 fully laid do%\Ti and repeated. He (Mr. 

 Jennings) was much struck in looking over a 

 church at Rainham the other day. He measured 

 the difference in the spacing bet^veen the arches 

 of the nave. One often found that scarcely any 

 two were exactly alike, and in this case there was 

 a difference of two feet in the west-end bay. There 

 was no apparent reason for this difference and he 

 thought that indicated that there was no abso- 

 lute hard and fast plan on paper as we under- 

 stood it to-day. It was most interesting that o^u? 

 Town Councils should seem to be based on this 

 system of Trade Gixilds, and he was much struck 

 by the fact that the head of a Guild was called 

 an aldenuan and wore a furred robe. He thought 

 there could be no doubt that the aldermen of our 

 town wen? the successors of the old Trade Guild 

 heads. As to the question of unemployment, he, 

 personally, regarded the decay of the system of 

 apprenticeship, as the crux of a lot of the troubles 

 which they were in to-day. It was the exception 

 to meet a thoroughly skilful craftsman. In coun- 

 try districts one would see a man working one 

 day as a labourer and on another as a bricklayer, 

 although it was quite obvious that he could not 

 be capable of skilful l>ricklaying without training. 

 Then, afterwards they found that work had been 

 spoilt because of the absence of training. He 

 thought this a very serious question. 



The President said he liappened to be reared in 

 East Anglia, where the black death was worse 

 than in any other part of England. Tmcing the 

 coast of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex one found a 

 succession of chiu'ches which we could consider 

 almost akin to cathedrals. They were remark- 

 able for the beauty and finish and the excellent 

 character of the work upon them, but where were 

 all the people and villages, and where were the 

 laboiu-ers who built those chm-ches ? They were 

 all gone. The chiu-ches alone remained, but most 

 of them now were getting into a condition of 

 decay and i-eqiiiring restoration of a kind which 

 it was almost impossible to undertake. Mr. 

 Harvey also mentioned that the scene of the plot 

 of Kider Haggard's book, " The Witch's Head," 

 was laid on the Suffolk coast. 



Mr. A. Lander raised a question as to the 

 quality of the work of the mediteval craftsman, 

 and pointed to the fact that the Bell Harry Tower 

 of Canterbury Cathedral had an outer skin of 

 stone, but was inside largely constructed of bricks. 



Mr. Jennings said he thought it was true to say 

 that, dealing with old walls, one found a great 

 d«al of loose material in them, but he did not think 

 that arose from a desire to put inferior workman- 

 ship behind, but that it was due to the difficulty 

 of obtaining better material and thus were led to 

 have recource to something which they would not 

 otherwise have used. Again, the media;val builders 



had little regard for foundations. They did not 

 go in for tlio foundations which modem builders 

 put in, and it was in gi-eat part due to that 

 fact that one so often found serious settlement 

 taking place in old buildings. As to the question 

 whether the buildings and the workmanship of 

 the present day were inferior to that of mediarval 

 times, as a whole, he did not believe that 

 there were any better workmen than the best 

 of to-day, but they were in the minority. He could 

 not help feeling that there never was a time when 

 there were such fine buildings, both from the 

 point of view of design and structure, as might be 

 found to-day in the streets of London. He kne*«r 

 that many people raved about everything and 

 anything that was old, merely because it was old ; 

 but, personally, he was not one of those. There 

 was some old furniture, wliich was admirable in 

 every way, but other old stuff was really no better 

 than fire-wood ; yet some people raved over it, 

 whether good, bad or indifferent. The beat 

 workmanship turned out to-day was equal to 

 anything that was ever done, but, owing no doubt 

 to the exigences of the time in which we lived, 

 there was a tremendous amount of poor building. 

 In the present day there was great difficulty in 

 obtaining good timber — t!ie fault lay not with the 

 people who used other material, but they could 

 not buy good timber. So it was in the old days. 

 There were certain things which they could not 

 get, and the best had to be made of the material 

 available. Subject to the limitations of time and 

 place, their work was good from beginning to end, 

 and, of course, subject also to their knowledge. 

 Although design was good, no one would but 

 agree that their skill in engineering and from a 

 constructional point of view was not equal to the 

 best work of to-day. He understood that the 

 walls of the Angel Steeple of Canterbury Cathe- 

 dral are backed up in parts with bricks, 

 and he believed that some parts of the 

 interior of the walls was composed of chalk — 

 probably that was the only material to hand, and 

 they knew that, when protected with a hard face, 

 chalk would last remarkably well. There were 

 modern instances in which we had gone back to 

 the idea of building with chalk both externally 

 and internally ; this was done in some country 

 districts in houses of considerable size. 



Mr. Walter Cozens said he mentioned in his 

 recent paper that at places the intei'ior of the 

 Angel Steeple was faced with good, honest brick, 

 and he believed that that was far more lasting 

 than the Caen stone outside. Brick was the most 

 lasting material which they could obtain, so that 

 they had the best material inside the tower. 

 Whether the internal portion of the wall was of 

 rubble, he could not say. Mr. Cozens went on to 

 mention that a short time ago when in Carlisle 

 he saw a short tower with Norman arches around, 

 which had been crushed out of sliape through the 

 addition of a low storey on the top of the tower. 

 There being little or no foundations, the additional 

 weight had crushed in tlio arches about two feet. 



Th« proceedings shortly afterwards terminated. 



