This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880 Excerpt: ... house at Hildesheim (fig. 174, p. 165), unhappily now burnt, was a rich and splendid specimen. This system of post and pan houses, as they were called, prevailed all over England during the Middle Ages. London was built in this way till the Great Fire destroyed it, and as municipal regulations compelled the houses to ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880 Excerpt: ... house at Hildesheim (fig. 174, p. 165), unhappily now burnt, was a rich and splendid specimen. This system of post and pan houses, as they were called, prevailed all over England during the Middle Ages. London was built in this way till the Great Fire destroyed it, and as municipal regulations compelled the houses to be whitewashed every year, it got the name of the "White Town." These ages were not altogether dark. The clause in the building lease of every London house, that it shall be painted outside every three years is possibly a survival of this regulation. These houses, however, had the disadvantage of being very combustible. Fires were constantly occurring, and it was enacted that the sheriffs should be provided with a hook for pulling down the houses to stop the fires. One of these hooks attached to a long pole is still kept in a gate-house at Harwich. The building Acts at present in force in most towns compel a solid wall of stone or brick between each house rising eighteen inches above the roof. To this regulation we are indebted to our immunity from great fires in our modern rows of houses. This mode of constructing the walls of houses was stopped at last only by stringent laws, which compelled the party-walls between the houses to be of stone. Afterwards the use of wood as a building material for walls was altogether forbidden in our towns. It is still a cheap and comfortable mode of construction, which may be used with advantage in country districts for cottages, and for filling in the triangular space of the gables of houses, when, the walls being built to one level height all round, it forms as if a perpendicular piece of roof, with which its construction is more consistent than stone walling. With the progress of nations in the a...
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