Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
At Hertford Castle, Hertford, Hertfordshire, the late medieval gatehouse was
built for Edward IV in 1461-65 of bricks '… made locally by Cornelius Gyles -
clearly of continental origin - for 1s. 9d. per thousand… laid by nine “breek-
masons” ' (Smith, 1983, 30). Harvey (1984, 73-4) indicates that at Kirby
Muxloe Castle the master mason placed in charge of the bricklaying, and small
elements of stonework, was John Cowper, who trained as a stonemason at Eton
College. In the 1520s Robert Newby was employed as both the master brick-
layer and chief mason at Lincoln Cathedral. Christopher Dickenson, who was
in charge of eighty-seven bricklayers at Hampton Court Palace between 1537,
rising to 113 in 1539, was master mason at Windsor Castle and Nonsuch Palace,
yet the Nonsuch accounts record his role there as a Master Bricklayer (Harvey,
1984, 213). Piers Conway, stonemason/carver (Conway, 2002) states:
It is my belief that when the craft of 'cut and rubbed' brickwork came to this
country, the lack of craftsmen in this field would have provided an opportunity
for out of work stonemasons to take up the mantle and apply their skills to the
new fashion. This would have been viewed at that time as perfectly natural.
Despite this there would have been occasional tensions between the two crafts
with the greater use of brick, and problems of craft demarcations too, as at York
in 1491, when two masons murdered a 'tiler' [bricklayer] during a dispute on
the construction of the Red Tower (Harvey, 1984, 144). Ordinary bricklayers,
rather than hewers or brickmasons, would have been skilled only in 'setting' or
laying standard bricks to bond, or stones, as Moore (1991, 233) indicates:
At Tattershall Castle the accounts mention 'masons called brekmasons' and
'roughbrekmasons'; possibly only the first category laid the facing bricks and
built the vaulting and corbelling.
Post-fired Cutting or Green Moulded
All the time and expense for 'cutting and rubbing' bricks may seem strange
to many observers today. Why not make a mould to the desired shape and cast
the shape before firing when so many repeats would be needed? There are sev-
eral answers to this:
●
The slight warping and twisting of the varying brickearth/clays in firing
would be a problem for enrichments, especially where precision was vital
(not so much though for those bricks hidden by stucco).
●
The lack of skill of brickmakers in making sophisticated timber mould
boxes to cast the clay in and mould the special shape before firing.
●
The problem of moulding complex shapes that possess deep undercutting
made their removal from the timber mould box, fixed with removable
'negatives', virtually impossible.
