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Archaeologia Cantiana -  Vol. 58  1945  page 38

Recent discoveries in the Archives of Canterbury Cathedral
 a note on the Craftsmen
by John H. Harvey

like Yevele and Lote was at the same time Chief Mason to the King. The "custos de la Loygge Lathomorum," warden or resident master of the works (as Hoo had probably been), was in 1429 John Morys, while under him were 16 masons working in the "Loygge," and 3 apprentices; in 1428 there had been 20 masons, 6 setters, 2 apprentices, and 4 labourers, an even larger staff than that working on the nave in 1396.20  It is nowadays recognized that the term "lodge" was not in the Middle Ages used in any esoteric sense, but meant simply the shed or workshop in which the masons hewed the stone. None the less it is a matter of some interest to learn (from so impartial a document as a lease) the precise position of the "Masons' house called le loygge" at Canterbury.21
   Of the later craftsmen named, the most important was William Bonville, marbler of Corfe. The Bonvilles were a large and influential Purbeck family at this time,22 and it has not so far been possible to identify the marbler, but he evidently had an extensive business, in spite of the competition of the alabastermen and freestone masons, whose products had for many years been tending to supplant those made from the native marble. Bonville's "marble stones" for three Priors of Christchurch were among the last representatives of their kind.

NOTES.
   1  H. C. Darby, etc.: Historical Geography of England, 1936, p. 284.
  
2  Cf. C. Woodforde, "Glass-Painters in England before the Reformation," in Journal of the British Society of Master Glass-Painters, VI (October, 1935), p. 64. Chapter Library MS. R.33, pt. i.
  
3  Chapter Library, Box D., Rentals, etc.
  
4  I have assembled what is known of his career as an appendix to "The Education of the Mediaeval Architect" in Journal R. I. B. A., June, 1945.
  
A. Vallance: Old Crosses and Lychgates, 1933, p. 102, and Figs. 130-131; F. H. Crossley: English Church Monuments, 1933, p. 54; Count Paul Biver in Archæological Journal, LXVII, 1910, p. 51 ff.
 
6  R. Willis: "Conventual Buildings of .........Christ Church in Canterbury" in Archæologia Cantiana, VII, 1868.
 
7  R. Willis: Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 1845, p. 117 ff; cf. A. Oswald: "Canterbury Cathedral: the Nave and its Designer," in Burlington Magazine, LXXV (December, 1939), p. 221 ff.
 
8  D. Knoop and G. P. Jones: The Mediaeval Mason, 1933, pp. 118-121. The ancient custom of assigning alternate feast days to the King and to the masons, found in the Westminster Abbey fabric roll of 1253 (Willis in G. G. Scott: Gleanings from Westminster Abbey, 2nd ed., 1863, p. 232) is explicitly defined in an account of 1329, P.R.O., E.101-467-7(1): "When any workmen of whatsoever condition or craft they may be shall stay upon the King's work continuously as for a fortnight, three weeks, a month or more, and two or more feast days shall occur ........ within the same time, Sundays only excepted, the ing shall have one feast day beginning at the first and the workmen the other in this manner, namely that the same workmen shall take from the King on each such alternate feast day their full and entire wages notwithstanding that they have

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