shrink. Hence the joints came apart, and being exposed to the weather became decayed. In consequence of this the buildings settled, and new methods had to be devised to make them weather-proof. The villages therefore adopted two or three means in order to attain this end. They plastered the whole surface of the walls on the outside, or they hung them with deal boarding or covered them with tiles. In Surrey tile-hung houses are more common than in any other part of the country. This use of weather-tiles is not very ancient, probably not earlier than 1750, and much of this work was done in that century or early in the nineteenth. Many of these tile-hung houses are the old sixteenth-century timber-framed structures in a new shell. Weather-tiles are generally flatter and thinner than those used for roofing, and when bedded in mortar make a thoroughly weather-proof wall. Sometimes they are nailed to boarding, but the former plan makes the work more durable, though the courses are not so regular. These tiles have various shapes, of which the commonest is semicircular, resembling a fish-scale. The same form with a small square shoulder is very generally used, but there is a great variety, and sometimes those with ornamental ends are blended with plain ones. Age imparts a very beautiful colour to old tiles, and when covered with lichen they assume a charming appearance which artists love to depict.
The mortar used in these old buildings is very strong and good. In order to strengthen the mortar used in Sussex and Surrey houses and elsewhere, the process of "galleting" or "garreting" was adopted. The brick-layers used to decorate the rather wide and uneven mortar joint with small pieces of black ironstone stuck into the mortar. Sussex was once famous for its ironwork, and ironstone is found in plenty near the surface of the ground in this district. "Galleting" dates back to Jacobean times, and is not to be found in sixteenth-century work.
Sussex houses are usually whitewashed and have thatched roofs, except when Horsham slates or tiles are used. Thatch as a roofing material will soon have altogether vanished with other features of vanishing England. District councils in their by-laws usually insert regulations prohibiting thatch to be used for roofing. This is one of the mysteries of the legislation of district councils. Rules, suitable enough for towns, are applied to the country villages, where they are altogether unsuitable or unnecessary. The danger of fire makes it inadvisable to have thatched roofs in towns, or even in some villages where the houses are close together, but that does not apply to isolated cottages in the country. The district councils do not compel the removal of thatch, but prohibit new cottages from being roofed with that material. There is, however, another cause for the disappearance of thatched roofs, which form such a beautiful feature in the English landscape. Since mowing-machines came into general use in the harvest fields the straw is so bruised that it is not fit for thatching, at least it is not so suitable as the straw which was cut by the hand. Thatching, too, is almost a lost art in the country. Indeed ricks have to be covered with thatch, but "the work for this temporary purpose cannot compare with that of the old roof-thatcher, with his 'strood' or 'frail' to hold the loose straw, and his spars—split hazel rods pointed at each end—that with a dexterous twist in the middle make neat pegs for the fastening of the straw rope that he cleverly twists with a simple implement called a 'wimble.' The lowest course was finished with an ornamental bordering of rods with a diagonal criss-cross pattern between, all neatly pegged and held down by the spars."12
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