. The popular history of England : an illustrated history of society and government from the earliest period to our own times . e of thesimplest character, and performed with the rudest mechanical power. Thelinen fabrics were chiefly of domestic production. But there were skilledartificers in London and the principal towns; although factories were un-known. These were principally connected with the arts of building and ofclothing. Elaborately carved fronts, in which each story of the timberhouses overhung the lower for protection, still attest the ingenuity of thejoiner. Our workmen, says Harr
. The popular history of England : an illustrated history of society and government from the earliest period to our own times . e of thesimplest character, and performed with the rudest mechanical power. Thelinen fabrics were chiefly of domestic production. But there were skilledartificers in London and the principal towns; although factories were un-known. These were principally connected with the arts of building and ofclothing. Elaborately carved fronts, in which each story of the timberhouses overhung the lower for protection, still attest the ingenuity of thejoiner. Our workmen, says Harrison, are grown generally to such anexcellency of device in the frames now made, that they far pass the finest ofthe old. Throughout the country there was a more solid mode of building • 33 i 34 Deary VIII. c. 10. f Ellis, 2nd Series, vol. ii. p. IPS. !547.] BCJILDING—PAVING OF LONDON. ?i79 than in previous periods, and oak had taken the place of the less durable ambitious citizens of London raised high towers of brick, at which Stowis indignant; for he holds that they were constructed that the ownor might. Old House, formerly at Warwick. overlook his neighbours. The plain brick work of this period may still beseen in the gateway of Lincolns Inn. The progress of improvements intowns was necessarily most rapid in London—the chief city of commerce, theseat of government and of law—with a population estimated at a hundred andfifty thousand.* The paving acts for the metropolis in the time of HenryVIII. indicate something of the vigilant superintendance of the generalgovernment; but they also show the chief cause of local neglect. The com-mon highway between Charing Cross and the Strand Cross is very foul andjeopardous, and the owners of lands are required to pave the same under apenalty of sixpence for every square yard not sufficiently paved by a Holborn, which is described as the common passage from the westand north-west parts of the realm, is full
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade188, bookpublisherlondon, bookyear1883
