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" too much regard for our old churches to recommend the wanton 

 " destruction of such work wherever I think that with care and 

 " attention it might be preserved. There are many instances 

 " doubtless where timber and stone become so much decayed as 

 " to be not only useless but unsafe, and in these it is clearly a 

 " duty to replace them with sound, new materials, restoring the 

 " details as nearly as possible to match the old work. 



" In the case of this aisle roof, the course which I recommend 

 " the parish to adopt, and which I think will be practicable and 

 " economical at the same time, is to take down the roof entirely, 

 " to remove all badly decayed timbers, replacing them with new, 

 " sound oak, and to reframe the roof on the old lines, reusing all 

 " those timbers whicti are sound and fit for the purpose. I should 

 " strongly wish to preserve the old principals, and would en- 

 " deavour to do so by cutting off the decayed portions and 

 " scarfing on new pieces of oak, putting over all some strong deal 

 * or iron beams to take the principal weight, and bolting these on 

 " to the old oak." 



The work has been carried out in accordance with these recom- 

 mendations by Mr. Bladwell, builder, and I think that the care 

 taken to reuse every available piece of old timber and refix it in 

 the place that it came from would almost satisfy the Society for 

 the Preservation of Ancient Buildings. 



By the large contract sections you will see what parts of the 

 old timbers were to be replaced with new, and with the method 

 adopted of bolting together the old and new work a strong con- 

 struction was secured, and the old beams (which otherwise would 

 have been useless) were thus refixed in their former positions. 



Above the old roof (which I may observe was only dealt with 

 by two bays at a time) we have constructed a strong deal outer 

 roof covered with lead, and over each of the oak principals we 

 have a double 9in. by 4in. deal truss with iron bolts going down 

 through the oak beams. 



The specimen of wood is from one of the panels of the Hunger- 



