Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/50

38 employed in the alternate courses, in order to vary the positions of the vertical joints, and to bind the work together with proper solidity. A hollow structure of this kind would serve for a chimney shaft, but if the centre cavity were tilled with hard materials it might be used for the shaft of a pinnacle, or for a pillar, instead of one of stone. These bricks might also be combined in a similar construction of smaller size, by cutting off two of the angles, as described by fig. 8, the external diameter of which would be 12 inches, and that of the internal cavity 5 inches; they are likewise suited to the formation of chamfered quoins of walls, buttresses, &c., fig. 9, if used together with plain bricks such as have been described above, but in both these last-mentioned cases there would be joints at the angles, which would give a rude appearance to the work, unless it was covered by plastering, as it probably would have been at the period when these bricks were made.

The specimens of which a section is given at fig. 5, are suited to form the coverings of set-offs in walls, or the tops of buttresses, fig. 10, and that they have been applied to some such purposes was evinced by the lichen with which one edge of nearly all of them was covered. Of the bricks represented by fig. 6, fewer fragments were found than of any of the others, and none of them exhibited any clear indications of