72 Scientific Proceedings, Royal Dublin Society. 



exhumed from the ancient places of sepulture, are often of very 

 finished workmanship as compared with the utensils just referred 

 to, some of them being ornamented with designs of no small 

 artistic merits. 



The manufacture of bricks in Ireland does not date back to 

 anything like the antiquity of that of pottery — a fact borne out 

 by the entire absence of any trace of such in the ancient structures 

 so numerous throughout the greater part of this country. 



As late as the year 1641 Grerrard Boate wrote as follows : — " In 

 every part of Ireland there is found a kind of clay fit for to make 

 bricks and all sorts of potters' ware, although the Irish never had 

 the wit or industry to make use of it for either of these ends ; yea, 

 they have ever been so far from making any earthen vessels, that 

 even the use thereof hath been very rare amongst them, and to the 

 most part unknown, not only before the coming in of the English, 

 but also since, yea, even until these very last times, although a 

 great number of English potters, in several parts of the land, had 

 set up their trade, so as all kind of earthenware was very common, 

 and was to be had at very easy rates. 



" And as for the bricks, they have been little used in Ireland, 

 even among the English themselves, for a great while ; but of late 

 years they began to be very common, as well in the country as in 

 the cities, especially Dublin, where all the new buildings (the 

 which not only in handsomeness, but also in number, do surpass 

 the old) are all made of brick. But that which is made in 

 Ireland, for the most part, is not so good as that of other countries, 

 not so much for any unfitness in the clay itself, as for want of 

 handling and preparing it aright — as may easily be conceived by 

 the following description of the manner they use to make it." 



Boate then gives a lengthened account of the manufacture of 

 bricks, as then carried on ; but, as the information he gives of the 

 manufacture of potters' ware is rather inaccurate, it is perhaps 

 unnecessary to recapitulate his version of brickmaking further 

 than to state that he estimates the value of the brick at six to 

 eight shillings per thousand. As regards the manufacture of 

 pottery, it is strange that a writer of Boate's abilities as an investi- 

 gator should have been unaware that pottery had been extensively 

 made by the ancient Irish; whilst as to brick, the early English 

 structures in this country rarely contain more traces of brick work 



