434 ON THE PRICE OF BUILDING MATERIALS, ETC. 



costly church of an earlier age, or the ruder structures of a still 

 more remote past. Such buildings as the Cathedral of York, 

 most of which dates from the earlier part of the fifteenth cen- 

 tury, the chapel of King's College, Cambridge, which was 

 designed in the middle of the same period, and the Divinity 

 School and S. Mary's Church, Oxford, which were constructed 

 towards the end of the century, are types of an architecture 

 which, to my mind, reflects the opulence, the taste, and to some 

 extent the sentiment, of the age. 



There are not many relics of the domestic architecture of the 

 fifteenth century beyond a few collegiate buildings in Oxford 

 and Cambridge, and some municipal offices. But the embattled 

 home of this epoch is a great step in the direction of a more 

 modern style. In these edifices a new material was largely 

 used, long known indeed along the shores of north-eastern 

 Europe, and employed for centuries in this district before *it 

 became familiar in England. Bricks, as I mentioned more 

 than once in my earlier volumes, were not used in the four- 

 teenth century, at least I have found no mention of them. But 

 the eastern parts of England were in constant communication 

 with the Hanse towns, in which, as for example in Liibeck, 

 thirteenth and fourteenth century churches and other buildings 

 were commonly made of brick l . The earliest mention of 

 bricks is in 1405 and 1406, when a small quantity was purchased 

 at Hornchurch in Essex, probably from some ballast brought into 

 London. The next entry is in 1438, when they are purchased 

 at Cambridge ; the next in 1442, in London. It is only how- 

 ever in the fourth quarter of the fifteenth century that they 

 become common. 



The bricks of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were of 

 excellent quality, and the brickwork was admirable. Some of 



1 I cannot but conclude that the brick church in Dover Castle is a fourteenth-century 

 structure, and I think it more than probable that the materials from which it was built 

 were carried in ballast to Dover and employed for the purpose of building the church in 

 the castle. I do not see how it can be conceived to be Roman work. The lighthouse 

 is of course a different matter. 



