1666, gave a sudden check to the use of timber in house building in the
metropolis. Previous to that date the majority of houses had been of a
sort the most ornamental examples of which were copied in "Old London"
at the Colonial Exhibition. The rebuilding after the fire was largely in
brick; and in the suburbs, in the latter part of the 17th and the 18th
centuries, many dignified square brick mansions, with bold, overhanging
eaves and high roofs and carved ornaments, entered through a pair of
florid wrought iron high gates, were built, some few of which still
linger in Hampstead and other suburbs. The war time at the beginning of
this century was a trying time for builders, with its high prices and
heavy taxes, and some of the good-looking brick buildings of that day
turn out to have been very badly built when they are pulled about for
alterations. With the rapid, wonderful increase in population and wealth
in this metropolis during the last 50 years a vast consumption of bricks
has taken place, and a year or two back it was reported by the
commissioners of police that the extensions of London equaled in a year
70 miles of new house property, practically all of brick. Brick were
heavily taxed in the war time which I have referred to, and the tax was
levied before burning.

There was a maximum size for the raw brick, which it was supposed served
to keep bricks uniform, and the expectation was entertained that when
the duty came off, many fancy sizes of bricks would be used. This has
not, however, turned out to be the case. The duty has been taken off for
years; but the differences in the size of bricks in England are little
more than what is due to the different rate of shrinkage of brick earth
under burning. It must not, however, be supposed that they have always,
and in all countries, been of about the same dimensions.

The size and proportions of bricks have varied extremely in different