Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
out under Charles Montagu (1660-1721), 4th Earl and 1st Duke of Manchester.
Oswald (1968, 2) states:
The four fronts were faced with rubbed bricks of a rich red colour… This work, it
is believed, was to the design of architect Henry Bell (1653-1715) of Kings Lynn.
The Great Fire of London, 2nd-6th September 1666, caused extreme destruc-
tion, destroying 13,200 houses, and eighty-six of the one hundred and six
churches (Campbell, 2002, 10) in the timber-built medieval city. The ashes were
barely cold when Charles II issued a Royal Proclamation, consolidated by the
Building Act of 8th May 1667, which ordained:
And that they [the Surveyors] do encourage and give directions to all Builders
for ornament sake, that the Ornaments and projections of the Front-Buildings to
be rubbed Bricks: and that all the naked part of the walls may be done of rough
Bricks neatly wrought, or all rubbed….
The use of fine rubbed brickwork detailing was clearly highly regarded and seen
as an integral part of the better bricklayer's range of skills, thus allowing it to be
specified for the enrichments of the proposed new properties.
The knowledge of Dutch craft practices and their materials was clearly being
propagated through deeply-read leading architects and close friends like May,
Pratt, Hooke and, of course, Wren. Ideas would have been discussed at great
length with the best of the city master bricklayers, many of whom were also well
read, to help achieve the degree of enrichment and level of refinement required.
Certainly Moxon's writings on the work of the city bricklayer, effectively a
seventeenth-century manual on brickwork, reveal how essential craft knowledge,
skill in setting out geometry, and working post-fired bricks was considered to be.
Despite high levels of skills, contemporary craftsmen were not being as fully
trained as their foreign counterparts, which was itself the subject of some con-
cern (Beard, 1981, 11):
In a long statement in An Account of Architects and Architecture which John
Evelyn appended in 1664 to his translation of Freart's Parallele de L'Architecture,
he wrote that he thought English 'mechanicks' impatient at being directed and
unwilling to recognise failure, there was a current arrogance, he thought, which
implied that craftsmen were unwilling to be taught their trade further when they
had served an apprenticeship and worked for gentleman who were satisfied with
their endeavours. He did admit that our craftsmen were capable of exceeding
'even the most exquisite of other countries' when they set their minds to it
This was still of concern 30 years later (Beard, 1981, 120):
The humbler abilities of the majority of craftsmen were pin-pointed by Sir
Christopher Wren. Writing in 1694 to the Treasurer of Christ's Hospital, he
