Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/271

 ii s. XIL OCT. 2, i9i5.] NOTES AND Q (JERIES.

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ecclesiastical architecture, " the place that demands primary mention is Barnack."

Where stone was scarce, flints were largely used in churbh -building. The churchwar- dens' accounts of Exning, near Newmarket, have the following quaint entry :

" Paid to Sparrow of Moulton the furste day of Maye for gatheringe of ten lodes of flinte stones for the church wall, xxiid."

From the accounts of North Elmham (Norfolk) we find there was paid

" To ye scolers ffor bred and drynk when they gathered Stones, ijd."

The Home Office issues a complete lis* of quarries, many of which date back to very early times. But the best list of quarries for the question in hand is found in C. F. Mitchell's ' Brickwork and Masonry,' pp. 418-30. Edward Hull's 'Treatise on Building and Ornamental Stones ' is a most useful book, because it gives details not only of the mineral character of the stones, but also of their application to various buildings, ecclesiastical and other. Cox's ' The English Parish Church,' chap, iv., upon

all well and skilfully blended. G. E. Street's ' Brickwork in the Middle Ages ' consists of articles contributed to The Church Builder in 1863, 1864, and 1866. These I have not seen. Lethaby's ' Westminster Abbey and the King's Craftsmen ' contains a valuable index of craftsmen such as masons, marble workers, carpenters, &c. This index is placed after the general index to the book. E. S. Prior's * Cathedral Builders ' is written by an expert architect, and is a most excellent book, but it does not contain so much as one would expect upon the stone used. There is a good article upon Portland building stone in The Popular Science Review (D. Bogue), 1880, pp. 205-12. Weale's ' Quarterly Papers on Architecture,' vol. iv., has an article called ' Lithology,' which deals with stone historically and has useful data. In the works of the Venerable Bede there are accounts of the building of the churches of Wearmouth and Jarrow under Benedict Biscop.
 * Materials,' abounds in delightful details,

Your correspondent may like to be re- minded of a work of great interest and value which is buried away in Nichols's

Pegge's " Sylloge of the Remaining Authentic Inscriptions relative to the Erection of our English Churches, with a number of Copper Plates, exhibiting Facsimiles of some of the Most Material," 1787.
 * Bibliotheca Topog. Brit.' I refer to Samuel

A. L. HUMPHREYS. 187, Piccadilly, W.

Dean Purey-Cust's ' Walks round York Minster * contains a useful passage as regards the material with which that glorious cathedral was built. When Thomas of Bayeux was appointed to the primacy of the Northern province shortly after the Norman Conquest,

" he found the Minster a mass of ruins, and at once commenced its reconstruction. The material which he selected was not the sandstone of which the earlier building had been constructed, but the magnesian limestone at Thievesdale, near Tadcaster, a part of the great property which had been granted to the House of Percy by Edward the Confessor, and of which Mauger was the Vavasour, i.e., the sub-tenant of the land held by Percy in fee of the King. At first Percy seems to have given grants of stone and wood, and the Vavasour would have the right to a certain toll thereon ; but this Mauger appears to have waived, and eventually, as further contri- butions are mentioned as gifts from him, it would seem that he had obtained the fee simple of the land. At any rate his son Robert, who retained as a surname the title of Vavasour, gave ten acres and half a rood of the quarry in Thievesdale ' in free, pure, and perpetual alms ' to the Minster, His descendants in like manner gave as free gifts all the material required for the present building, except the Lady Chapel, which was built of stone procured from Huddlestone and from the ruined Archiepiscopal Palace at Sherburn ; and on the occasion of the fire in 1829 the first offer of ma- terial to repair the damages came from Sir Edward Vavasour, his lineal descendant.

" It is interesting to notice that, thus caring for the spiritual needs of those around them, the family of Vavasour seem to have been specially protected in their own. During all the religious struggles which have taken place in England, they have been allowed to hold their own little church at Hazlewood in peace, and to maintain therein the rights [rites ?] of ' the old faith,' to which they have always belonged. The name of Vavasour never appears amongst the persecutors or the persecuted. Pp. 8, 9.

It has been already stated in ' N. & Q.' that it is popularly believed that the head of the Vavasour family has a right to ride into York Minster on horseback, such privilege being the recognition of ancestral generosity. ST. SWITHIN.

Cox's ' The English Parish Church ' has seventy-five interesting pages on the mate- rials used in the building of cathedrals, &c. Sometimes special stone was brought from a long distance on pack-horses, whilst in other cases the local stone was used, as, for instance, in the building of the west front of Wells Cathedral, where Doulting oolite was used, which was quarried near Shepton Mallet, a few miles from Wells. The oolite freestone found at Chilmark in Wiltshire supplied the stone for Salisbury Cathedral. Softer stone was used for the interiors of churches, but was not suitable for exteriors,