THE EVOLUTION OF BUILDING.*

To an absorbing and fascinating book Mr. Innocent has elected to give the veracious but misleading and faintly repellent title of The Develop- ment of British Building Construction. Why thus dissemble ? Why modestly wrap up an intensely human document, a story stuffed with historical, ethical, and sociological significance, in the forbidding disguise of a technical treatise ? The severely scientific title and uncompromising text-book get-up verge on the deceptive,leading one to fear, as they do, that the advent of concrete and the girder are to be ponderously con- sidered, that weighty arguments are to be reinforced and made crush- ingly convincing (to the elect and professional few who can make head or tail of them) by austere scale-diagrams and abstract theoretical sections devoid of any human interest whatsoever. Whereas " Adven_ tures amongst Old Cottages," " The Wigwam's Progress," " History in Hovels," and "The Man-Bird's Nest" are all titles that really give a much truer idea of this intriguing romance. Etymologists and students of dialect will find in Mr. Innocent's book a rich assortment of delightful words rescued from the dying

vernacular of outlandish parts and piously preserved in print. ny wonderful eld words still lurk quite naturally and with all their original meaning in that otherwise dreary document the "architect's specification," and it is very pleasant thus suddenly to discover their pedigrees and birthplaces :— " William Morris said that the homely old English cottages were

• The Dereopment of Brifisa Building Conwrudion. By C. F. Innocents Case brklge : at the Loalsersits Press. Iles. bd. net.1

models of architecture in their way. They have been called ' unarohl-' tactual,' but all's fair that's fit, and they are valuable as examples of the appropriate use of material% as illustrations of fitness to site and surroundings, and as specimens of architectural development, for just as the finest man had his origin in a simple cell, so the finest examples of our architecture can be traced back in their origin, step by step, to simple ' unarehitectural ' buildings."

That is the chief concern of the book—the tracing back to their primitive origins of the many and complex architectural forms and expedients of to-day. It is a wonderful study in evolution. It might be said with truth that the intelligent study of a good building is a liberal education. For a full comprehension, authors as wide apart in time and experience as Chaucer and Sir Joseph Paxton must be con- sulted; the Scandinavian Sagas and the Classics must be ready to our hand if we would be adequately equipped for our researches, or so it seems- from Mr. Innocent's engaging pages. And there is a mine of odd and out-of-the-way information scattered through the book. For example :—

" In. North Wales the writer has found a tradition that the Welsh word ty,' meaning house, gave the name to the letter T ' because the early form of the letter was like a house with sloping sides and a central post or fork running up to the ridge."

"In the Middle Ages much timber was imported from the Baltic and Scandinavia under the name of Estland ' or Estrich ' timber. The Eastland Company in the time of Queen Elizabeth traded with both sides of the Baltic, and the word Estrich ' seems to have been a variant of Austria, and to have meant eastern realm."

"At the Cloth Hall at Ypres, the writer was informed that the great beams of the roof, twelve and a half metros in span, that is about forty-one feet, were from oak trees from Norway, and that the documents relating to the purchase were still in the possession of the municipality.

These were presumably destroyed with the rest of the unique and priceless archives of the city during the second battle.

"According to Professor Sullivan, in ancient Ireland ' round ' houses were made by making two basket-like cylinders, one within the other and separated by an annular space of about a foot, by inserting upright posts in the ground and weaving hazel wattles between, the annular space being filled with clay. Upon this cylinder was placed a conical cap, thatched with reeds or straw. Tho creel houses of many Highland gentlemen in the last century wore made in this way, except that they wore not round."

Here we have a sort of would-be pied de terre construction, the clay taking the place of the orthodox rammed earth. Then again we have comfortable words on the subject of " cob " :--

" In the complaints which are made from time to time of too onerous building by-laws in rural districts, oob is sometimes cited as a cheap and desirable form of walling, of which the use is forbidden. It is probable that no walls depend for their durability so much on the nature of the material as do these of mud. If the mud or cob be of the right kind. there seems no good reason why it should not be permitted for the wale of houses in rural districts, for a wall made of cob which contains proper lime may be regarded as built entirely of mortar. A Sheffield joiner has told the writer that in the middle of the last century, about Banbury in Oxfordshire, his early home, the men who worked on the roads built their own cottages of road scrapings, layer by layer, and when these were set it was almost impossible to pick the walls down."

And who knew that Daniel De Foe was a builder's merchant ?— " The waved tiles known as pantiles were a comparatively recent introduction from the Continent. According to the Dictionary of the Architectural Publication Society, before the time of Daniel De Foe they had been imported from the Netherlands ; he is said to have introduced their manufacture at Tilbury in Essex, but his venture was not a financial success."

Or again, who would have guessed that " Jenny, why getteat thou I " and " Rogue, why winkest thou ? " were the style and title of certain sizes of seventeenth-century slates ? Also, who would have looked for " sash " windows as early as 1519 1—

" The earliest sashes were unweighted and were raised by hand ; perhaps it was of such that William Herman wrote in the year 1519: ' I have many pretty wyndowes shetto with leery' gayago up and downe.' The French seem to have derived their knowledge of such windows from us, for the owner of a house near Montmartre, which was being built in the year 1699, showed his sash windows to some English travellers and pointed out how easily they might be lifted up and down and stood at any height, which contrivance he said he had out of England, by a small model brought on purpose from thence, there being nothing of this poise in France before. In this country the use of sash windows became pionoral, in buildings of the better sort, in the reign of the Dutch King, William HI."

Then as to cottage furniture :—

" The greater English buildings had felt the influence of the Renaissance in Italy ; but little impression had boon made on the smaller, and their construction had hardly been influenced. So it was also with the furniture which the buildings contained, which was marked by a ' sublime indifference to passing fashions.' Mr. Arthur Hayden says that bacon oupboard, linen chest, gate table, ladder-bank chair, and windsor chair were made down to fifty years ago, without departing from the original patterns of the periods of Charles I. and Queen Anne. And, we may add, it was only the lack of furniture in the ordinary houses of the Middle Ages which prevented the traditional patterns from reaching backwards to a much earlier period than the seventeenth century."

Poetry as well as mythology is represented here and there :— " There is a curious fifteenth-century poem, The Debate of the Carpenter's Tools,' in which the tools drecuss their work and thole employer after the manner of men, but his drinking powers and the amount which he spends upon liquor seem to be the characteristics of the carpenter which most interest his tools. His wife is made to complain that- ' He wylle spend more in an owre Than thou and I canna goto in fowro.'

She regrets that she ever married him and lays the blame on the parson for making them man and wife. The wimble describes itself and its duties ; Zys, zys, seyd the wymbylle, I ame as round as a thimble, My mayster's works, I wylle remembyre, I shall crepe fast into the tymbyre.'

And the persoro ' says : Fast to mane into the wode And byte I schall with moth (mouth) full geode.' " Which is all very engaging.

North Wales generally, and the Festiniog District quarries particu- larly, should cherish the saying of the wise Sir Balthazar Gerbior, who, giving " counsel and advice to all builders " in the year 1662, affirmed that lead and " Blew Slates " were " the best roof covering for a house."

Many of the illustrations bear each distressing footnotes as " From a photograph during demolition " or " Since destroyed " ; legends calculated to make one's blood boil with impotent rage against the unknown destroyers. But Mr. Innocent never seems ruffled, never expresses more than a mild regret at the of ten senseless and wanton destruction of irreplaceable things by ignorant men. Wherein he shows a wonderful restraint, a forbearance that is the only alternative to burst blood-vessels in this wicked jerry-building world.