BRIDEWELL,
Was built by Bartholomew Appleyard, about the year 1370. William Appleyard, his son, the first Mayor of Norwich, served his Mayoralty here in 1403. The North wall of this Bridewell is encrusted with cut flints, and is seventy-six feet in length, by about twenty-five high: it is considered one of the greatest curiosities of the kind in England. The flints are squared to such a nicety, that the edge of a knife can scarcely be insinuated between the joints: most of them are about three inches square, the surface is very smooth, and no brick-work can appear more regular.
Several churches and other buildings in the city are thus built.
Mr. Talman says, that the Jews introduced the art of squaring flints: and Dr. Cromwell Mortimer, Secretary to the Royal Society, in a note on a paper of Mr. Arderon’s on this very wall, observes, that the gate of the Austin Friars, at Canterbury, that of St. John’s Abbey, at Colchester, and the gate near Whitehall, Westminster, are in the same taste. But the platform on the top of the Royal Observatory at Paris, which, in instead of being covered with lead, is paved with flint after this manner, is an instance that the French have in some measure recovered this art. Phil. Trans. Abr. vol. 10. p. 1304.