Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
spirit of amity. The fraternity were dedicated to a saint, often the patron saint
of that craft, and guild members would attend church on that saint's feast
day; electing members to positions within the guild each year. Guilds were
concerned with maintaining standards of craftsmanship, quality of materials,
apprenticeships, continuity of work and a strict control of new craftsmen start-
ing up in the defined area of guild search and control.
Learning to be a bricklayer meant becoming an apprentice (from the Old
French 'aprentys' or 'aprendre' to learn, and the earliest records of appren-
ticeships in the building Industry in England date from the fourteenth century.
The apprentice would be 'bound' by the payment of a premium to a master -
meaning a teacher and not necessarily a master craftsman - for a defined
period of seven years termed 'time serving', as laid down in an ordinance of
4th June 1518, that formalised a long-standing practice. The agreement and its
dual responsibilities between the master and his apprentice were contained in
an 'indenture', a binding contract executed in two or more copies; which were
placed together so that their irregularly cut top edges were correspondingly
'indented' for identification. Guild officers called 'Searchers', ensured the
apprentices were properly housed, cared for, not made to work on Sundays,
received proper instruction in the craft, and did not divulge craft secrets, or
'mysteries'.
Though medieval guilds and chartered town corporations were in effect
exclusive of women, the
d
.1562-3 Statute of Artificers, which regulated con-
ditions of employment, did permit women to be taken on in all the building
trades as parish apprentices (Clarke and Wall, 2006, 53-4). In 1568, in the city
of London, the Worshipful Company of Tylers and Bricklayers received their
royal charter of incorporation from Queen Elizabeth 1st (
r
.1558-1603) grant-
ing them an 'area of search' in a fifteen miles radius from the old city walls.
Time-serving was not only a lengthy period of learning craft knowledge and
skills, it was also linked from the journey from boyhood to manhood. Upon
serving one's time, and demonstrating mastery of skills and knowledge through
the production of a 'masterpiece', an apprentice would become qualified as a
'Journeyman'. The very best of these qualified bricklayers would, through nat-
ural talent and experience, go on to become those craftsmen capable of set-
ting out and executing cut and rubbed work; and the elite of their ranks the
'Master Bricklayers'.
The use of brick during the Tudor period remained steady and was a rela-
tively cheap building material by the end of the sixteenth century (Smith,
1987, 10) and from this time it became so highly regarded that rich courtiers
and merchants chose it for their mansions. A number of the English nobility
saw military service in France where they saw the French architectural use of
brick, that stimulated them to use the same to build their own castles upon
their return home, such as Ralph, Lord Cromwell (
c.
1403-54/5), who built
