House and Garden 
vanes, crestings and roof gutters." 
The highest achievement was sup¬ 
posed to have been reached in 
the roof of the church of St. Eloi. 
When thus used the lead was 
closely related to carpentry, be¬ 
cause the kind of timber chosen 
for the roofs and the means of 
framing the parts were determined 
with a view to the weight of the 
lead tiles. The peculiar action of 
these under extremes of heat and 
cold and in contact with the sap 
of certain timbers was also taken 
into account. The craft of the 
plombier —a word derived from 
the material in which he worked 
—began with the early centuries 
of the Middle Ages and survived 
until the Renaissance epoch. But 
we must not confound the 
plumber of those days with the 
mechanic whose work today con¬ 
tributes to our comfort and whose 
bills we dread. The plombier of 
the Merovingian period in France 
was a roofer skilled in fitting and 
securely attaching his sheets to 
ARCHITECTURAL LEADWORK AT POUNDISFORD PARK 
3 The church of Notre Dame at Chalons-sur-Marne 
has a roof covered with lead, dating from the end of the thirteenth cen¬ 
tury. The cathedrals of Rheims, Amiens, Rouen and Evreux, the 
church of St. Paul-des-Champs, the Hotel Jacques Occur, and the Hotel 
Dieu at Beaune also have roofs as well as other external details of lead. 
AN URN AT VERSAILLES Made of Lead , Bronzed 
a wood superstructure. In the Low Coun¬ 
tries, also, the plombiers were as active as in 
France itself and they covered many of the 
Flemish roofs, of which a notable example 
is that of the Boucherie at Haarlem. These 
Dutch roofs were always steep, and extra pre¬ 
caution was taken to insure the stability of 
the covering by having the sheets near the 
base of the roof very thick, in order to sup¬ 
port the lighter ones above. 
ORNAMENTATION 
Lead roofs were usually decorated in one 
of various ways. The shape of the sheets 
and the position of the joints were of them¬ 
selves an effective surface pattern ; but still 
further enrichment was desired. And 
probably it was a little deep-rooted disdain 
for the common metal that caused the roofs 
to be gilded in semblance of a superior. 
From the recipe books of the last century 
giving instructions for this work the follow¬ 
ing may be quoted as examples : 
“Take two pounds of yellow ochre, half 
a pound of red lead, and one ounce of var- 
35 
