_Wattle and Daub._—It was ever a problem in London how to build without stone. Wood, gravel and mud were plentiful, and these were the common walling materials during the Middle Ages. As lately as the eighteenth century some of the suburban churches were described by Hatton as being of “boulder work,” that is, a concrete of coarse gravel; and the walls of the Temple Church, before the falsifying restorations, were of some sort of concreted rubble skinned over with plaster on the face. Hearne reports that Wren said that there were few masons in London when he was young. Mud walls are mentioned in mediæval records, and “daubers” were, I suppose, primarily those who did the filling in of post and pan work. The smaller houses of Londinium were largely of wattle and daub, and doubtless others were of crude brick. For the use of wattle and daub we have plentiful direct evidence. In the account of the excavations in and about Lombard Street in 1785 (_Archæol._ viii.) curious fragments were found which are thus described: “About this spot and in many other places large pieces of porous brick were met with of a very loose texture, seeming as if mixed with straw before they were burnt. They are commonly channelled on the surface; their size is quite uncertain, being mere fragments, their thickness about 1½ in. or 2 in.” Again, chalk-stone foundations and “channelled brick” are mentioned together. The “brick” fragments were of daubing, and the channels were the marks of laths, as has been shown by other finds. Similar remnants have recently been discovered on the Post Office site and in King William Street. “Débris of a wood and daub house which had been destroyed by fire.... In several cases the plaster was still adhering to the daub” (_Archæol._ lxvi.). Other fragments are preserved in the Silchester collection at Reading. The London fragments were found under conditions which showed that they had belonged to first-century dwellings. This method of building had been practised by the Celts, and we may imagine that the “populace” of Londinium was housed in small huts of wattle and clay roofed with reed thatch. In the country, old garden walls are occasionally found, I believe, built of mud daubing on both sides of wattle work, and sheep shelters of wattle-hurdles and dry fern are, I suppose, direct descendants of the old British manner of building. Mr. Bushe-Fox has remarked that one of the earliest houses at Silchester and the earliest houses at Wroxeter were of wattle and daub construction. See also Mr. Lambert’s paper in _Archæologia_, December 1921.