Chapter III

, were at first filled with “pugging” of stone or brick and clay mixed with chopped straw and then plastered over in the manner of the “black and white” or half timber work in England. Whether the wall spaces between the studs were ever stopped with “wattle and dab”--an old English filling of clay, plastered over a kind of loose basketwork of interwoven wattles or withes--the writer is unable to say with certainty. It is not at all improbable that the stud spaces were sometimes so filled and it is quite certain that some of the early Connecticut chimneys were constructed in this manner. The survival of “wattle and dab” work in New England in any form is an interesting instance of the persistence and continuity of craft traditions.

Clapboards were made chiefly of oak or pine and were nailed horizontally to the outside of the studs. They were usually feather edged and lapped, the upper over the lower. Although it is not impossible that there was some precedent in England for the use of clapboards nailed horizontally on the outside of the studding, it is highly probable that the practice of applying them in this manner in New England was first dictated by climatic necessity as a remedy and afterwards became incorporated as an essential part of frame construction. In some parts of New England, especially in Rhode Island and portions of Connecticut, studs between the posts were dispensed with and vertical boarding of oak or pine, usually more than an inch thick, was nailed to the cills and girts. This vertical boarding, for which, also, there seems to have been an English precedent, was generally, though not invariably, covered outside either with horizontal clapboards or with long shingles.

Shingles of pine were made both in the sizes common to-day and also of much larger dimensions, the latter being used for the outer sheathing of walls that had first been boarded. Roof shingles were sometimes laid on boarding, sometimes on “lathing” or small strips, nailed like purlins on the rafters. Shingles afforded the usual roofing material not only in New England but throughout the Colonies, although slate was not unknown and on some of the larger buildings copper and lead were occasionally used. In dry weather the danger to shingle roofs from sparking chimneys and the additional source of danger, at all times, from defective or uncleaned flues, led our forebears to adopt some rather curious and interesting methods of fire prevention. In early New England there were the chimney viewers whose duty it was to inspect the chimneys and compel the householders, by fines or other means, to keep their chimneys in repair and have them swept with sufficient frequency. This was a precaution of the utmost importance in communities where most of the houses were built of wood.

In Philadelphia, in Colonial times, the sight of a blazing chimney was enough to throw the whole community into an uproar and blazing chimneys were the subject of legislation by the Provincial Assembly of 1775, which enacted that “Every person whose Chimney shall take Fire and blaze out at the Top, not having been swept within one Calendar Month, shall forfeit and pay the sum of Twenty Shillings; but if swept within that Time and taking Fire and blazing out at the Top, the Person who swept the same, either by himself, his Servants or Negroes, shall forfeit and pay Twenty Shillings.”

Glass for windows in the beginning of the Colonial period was a luxury enjoyed by only a few of the more well-to-do settlers and even oiled paper was not always easy to come by so that oftentimes the humbler houses had only shutters to close window apertures and afford protection from the weather. Window glass, however, was imported at an early date and at an early date, also, glass in small panes was manufactured in the Colonies.

The earliest windows were filled with small diamond shaped panes leaded into the casements and the casement window was universally used. In the fore part of the eighteenth century, double or single hung sash windows became the fashion and were very generally substituted for the older casements by alterations made in the manner alluded to in