Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/304

 282 NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. city was consumed thereby ; as it happened in the first year of King Stephen, when by a fire which began at London Bridge, the church of St. Paul was burnt, and then that fire spread, consuming houses and buildings, even unto the church of St. Clement Danes. Afterwards many citizens to avoid such danger, according to their means built on their freeholds stone houses roofed with thick tiles, and protected against the ravages of fire, whereby it often fell out that when a fire was kindled in the city, and had wasted many edifices and reached such a house, not being able to injure it, it there became extinguished, so that many neighbours' houses were wholly saved from fire by that house." It is clear from this simple narrative, which in point of authenticity is worth all notices in the chronicles put together, that in the twelfth century, there were in London many houses built of stone ; and it may be presumed they had increased in number by the thirteenth. That the majority, how- ever, were still ligneous structures, may be readily believed ; and ancient conveyances seem to make a distinction between buildings of stone and wood, terming the former clomus, and the latter edificia. The houses, of whatever material, appear never to have exceeded one story in height : when Henry the Third visited St. Louis at Paris, he greatly admired the houses of that city, consisting for the most part of many stories ; from which it may be inferred he had not been accustomed to a similar style of building in his own kingdom. The ground floor of the London houses at this period was, aptly enough, called a cellar, the upper story a solar. Although a con- siderable quantity of ground cultivated as gardens existed within the walls, and we read from time to time, in the coroners' rolls, of mortal accidents which befel youths attempting to steal apples in the orchards of Paternoster Row and Ivy Lane, still the necessarily close proximity of dwellings in the main streets led at an early period to the enactment of stringent regulations for the protection of individual rights and the settlement of disputed boundaries. The assize of 1 1 89 is entitled to be considered the prototype of the act relating to party walls which was passed in our own times ; it fixed the thickness of the wall at three feet ; determined the right of property in it ; regulated the con- struction of gutters, and even went so far as to establish " that if any one should have windows towards the land of his neighbour, and' even though he had been seised of the view of the said windows for a long time, and his ancestors before him, nevertheless his neighbour could block up such view by building opposite those windows, or otherwise obstructing them, unless he who owned them could shew any writing to the contrary." When two parties agreed to build of stone, the party-wall was to be constructed at their joint expense ; its ordinary height being fixed by the assize at sixteen feet ; either party having liberty to raise his own half of it, as might be deemed expedient. Any householder might lay down a pavement before his tenement, provided it were not to the nuisance of the city or of his neighbour. .The result of a careful examination of the evidence relating to the ap- pearance of London houses in the thirteenth century, leads unavoidably to