3^0 Literary and Philosophical Society. 



command discharged their hods simultaneously. The 

 shock, added to the weight already accumulated, broke 

 down the arch, and the debris, falling with heightened 

 force on the arch below, carried it away, and so a hole 

 was cut from top to bottom of the high building — seven 

 storeys — in the course of a few seconds. 



* To obviate danger from the use of cast-iron beams of 

 the length required by the spacious rooms of the house, 

 Mr. Dyer conceived the plan of narrow flattened arches 

 (about 5 feet span) supported by their thrust upon the 

 beams, which were in like manner supported by the thrust 

 of the next arch, and so on from end to end of the house ; 

 the ends of the beams being of course built into the walls. 

 The outside walls were constructed especially to meet the 

 accumulated strain. First the stone casing, nine or ten 

 inches thick, then a space filled with carefully wrought 

 rubble and inside brickwork, a brick and a half thick, of 

 which thickness were also the inner walls of the house.^ 

 The top floor was, however, rendered fireproof on a 

 different plan, wooden beams being used and the spaces 

 between them filled with grout, completely excluding the 

 air from the beams, and when set hard, imbedding them so 

 to speak in stone casings. On a similar plan Mr. Dyer built 

 his factory in Store Street, the latter being finished several 

 years before the former, which took about seven years to 

 build. 



' ' The east and west ends of the house that bore the chief strain were 

 strengthened, the former by a row of strong semi-circular pilasters bearing a 

 pediment, the latter by a large bow window, wdth side abutments or projec- 

 tions. The beams lay north and south, save in the large saloon, where they 

 lay east and west, the southern wall being strengthened to meet their trust in 

 that direction, and to the north it was met by the ends of the arches of the 

 drawing-room and boudoir.' 



