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noun
Stonework  n.  Work or wall consisting of stone; mason's work of stone.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Stonework" Quotes from Famous Books



... the opportunity of visiting a daimyo's castle. I was impressed by its strength not only because of the wide moats but because of the series of earthen fortifications faced with cyclopean stonework through which an invading force must wind its way. There was within the walls a surprisingly large drilling ground for troops and also an extensive drug garden. The present owner of the castle proposed to build here a library and ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... along the sea-shore, where a frugal man might with hard work just pay his rent and have butter instead of treacle on Sundays. In the centre there is a grey-stoned slate-roofed house with a byre behind it, and "1703" scrawled in stonework over the lintel of the door. There for more than a hundred years our folk have lived, until, for all their poverty, they came to take a good place among the people; for in the country parts the old yeoman is often better thought of than ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... fearfully. I knew it for the ruins that are called Nan-Tauach, the 'place of frowning walls.' And at the silence of my men I recalled what Christian had written of this place; of how he had come upon its 'ancient platforms and tetragonal enclosures of stonework; its wonder of tortuous alleyways and labyrinth of shallow canals; grim masses of stonework peering out from behind verdant screens; cyclopean barricades,' and of how, when he had turned 'into its ghostly shadows, straight-way ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... dragging his fierce burden with him, George stumbled over a dead bough which lay upon the bank of the lake, and fell backwards into the water, exactly at the spot where the foundations of the old boat-house wall rose to within a few inches of the surface. His head struck heavily against the stonework, and he and the dog, who would not loose his grip, lay on it for a moment, then they rolled off together into the deep pool, the man dragging the dog with him. There were a few ripples, stained with little red ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... Drunkenness, the tree, which forms the chiefly decorative portion of the sculpture,—fig in the one case, vine in the other,—was a necessary adjunct. Its trunk, in both sculptures, forms the true outer angle of the palace; boldly cut separate from the stonework behind, and branching out above the figures so as to enwrap each side of the angle, for several feet, with its deep foliage. Nothing can be more masterly or superb than the sweep of this foliage on the Fig-tree angle; the broad leaves lapping round the budding ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... waggon it were, must be on the roadway to the left. Again she leaned forward over the balustrade. A faint tremor ran through the stonework on which her arms rested. For a moment she fancied it some trick of ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... balance the article against the projection of the building I might, by standing it on end, use it as an improvised ladder. If I could only mount for a certain distance I could pull myself up by the ledge of stonework which ran along the ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson

... years. Meanwhile, fearing another and closer attack, Guir converted one of the lower rooms of his house into an impenetrable and unassailable place of refuge. The windows were walled up, to correspond with the stonework of the house, leaving no suspicion of there having been once an opening. Likewise the doors were treated, and then carefully plastered both within and without, with the exception of one, which he made anew, to communicate with a private stairway ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale

... a fortnight's hard work before the outwork was completed. It was twenty feet high, triangular in form, and solid in construction. Many of the tenants were accustomed to stonework; and while the rest of the bastion was constructed of rough stones mixed with earth, a parapet four feet thick, of roughly dressed stones, was carried along on the crest of the two outward sides. Four guns were mounted here; the rest ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty

... to a most delicate silvery grey, with ivy sprawling over it in places, like water shot out from a pail over a stone floor. There were just a few traces of other buildings in the sheds and walls, and bits of carved stonework piled up in a rockery. No doubt the little farm itself and the cottages were all built out ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... averaged something like a couple of hundred invalids, and doctors in fair proportion; and I never heard that either did badly. It was an error of judgment, perhaps, to start our municipal works with a costly Necropolis, or rather the gateway of one; two marble pillars, if you please—the only stonework in Eucalyptus to this day—with 'Campo' on one side and 'Santo' on the other. No healthy-minded person would be scared by this. But the invalids complained that we'd made the feature too salient; and the architect has ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the three wend on through the wild-wood till they come to a grassy plain Beneath the untrodden mountains; and lo a noble house, And a hall with great craft fashioned, and made full glorious; But night on the earth was falling; so scantly might they see The wealth of its smooth-wrought stonework and its world of imagery: Then Loki bade turn thither since day was at an end, And into that noble dwelling the lords of God-home wend; And the porch was fair and mighty, and so smooth-wrought was its gold, That the mirrored stars of heaven therein might ye behold: But ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris

... began, the choir being undertaken first. For this purpose the church was divided into two parts by means of a hoarding. When the pavement in the choir was removed, the graves there were all carefully examined and their identification verified where possible. Many fragments of historic stonework were found, and these have been grouped together in the south-east chapel, which forms a kind ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse

... road and field path through Broadwater. The church stands in a group of elms on the slope to the north of the village. The tower and part of the chancel are undoubtedly Saxon, the remainder of the church having been rebuilt in Norman and Early English times. Notice the characteristic bands of stonework which run round the tower and the long capitals of the central ribs. The gabled spire is almost unique in this country and will awaken memories of Alsace for those who know that land. A similar spire may be seen in another Down country, at Sarratt in Hertfordshire, and a modern example ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... a short distance to the south-west of East Grinstead, is another "tye"—Gravetye, a tudor mansion in a deep hollow, the home of Mr. William Robinson, the author of The English Flower Garden. Last April, the stonework, of which there is much, was a mass of the most wonderful purple aubretia, and the wild garden between the house and the water a paradise ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... round and resting, towards the court, on slender pillars. Thence, again, several enclosed stairs led to the upper stories of the house, which were thus broken up into distinct divisions. The windows, both within and without, were closely shuttered; some of the stonework in the upper parts had fallen; the roof, in one place, had been wrecked in one of the flurries of wind which were common in these mountains; and the whole house, in the strong, beating sunlight, and standing out above a grove of stunted cork-trees, thickly laden and discoloured with dust, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... such details as the hair makes one doubtful if Donatello can have been wholly responsible. A somewhat analogous Flagellation in Berlin[216] is the work of a clever but halting plagiarist. He has inserted a Donatellesque background of arches showing the lines of stonework, and a pleasant detached girl who reminds us of the figure on the Siena and St. George reliefs. But the imitator's weak hand is betrayed by the anatomy of the three principal figures. The positions are those of force and energy, but there is no tension or muscular ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... now," Malcolm said as he set the example by sitting down against the wall. "It will be hours before the stonework below will be cool enough ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... terminal end of a modern ditch ('the burn' of Mr. Alston), extending towards the shore, and having on its eastern bank a row of stepping- stones; a fact which, in my opinion, partly accounts for the demolition of the stonework, which formerly stood over them. So far, the facts disclosed by the excavations of the structures at Dumbuck, though highly interesting as evidence of the hand of man in the early navigation of the Clyde basin, present nothing very remarkable or improbable. It is when we come to examine the ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang

... away from the river. Major Elmslie threw altogether some 410 Lyddite shells into Omdurman. Most of them detonated, but there were a few that merely flared. It was the fumes from these that imparted a chrome colour to the surrounding earth and stonework. Why the Khalifa did not make greater use of his artillery and musketry became more of a puzzle than ever when we saw how well provided he was in both respects. He had a battery of excellent big Krupps that were never fired, besides eight or ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... unexpectedly burned by means of a fire-ship sent in by the enemy. The damage, however, was very soon repaired, and the mole rendered more perfect than formerly, and carried nearer to the town, when all of a sudden a furious tempest arose, which, undermining the stonework that supported the wood, laid the whole at once in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... to the belfry-floor from the arch where the stonework was left undressed. I must have it seen to. As I was about to say: for one, I like this law forbidding duplicates. It evokes fine personalities. Yes, Excellenza, that strange, and—to you—uncertain smile, and those fore-looking eyes of ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... grating. "It is good enough to pass, and we need not trouble further about it. Now collect every grain of those iron filings. No, don't do that on any account," he broke in, as Ronald was preparing to blow some of it from the lower stonework through the opening. "Were you to do that, it would be quite possible that one of the prisoners walking in the yard might see it, and would as likely as not report the circumstance to one of the warders in order to curry favour and perhaps obtain a remission of his sentence. ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... little gallery room with narrow slits in the stonework, opening out of the further passage that led to Monsieur and Madame de Sainfoy's rooms. It used to be empty or filled with lumber; it now held several large wardrobes, but the perforated wall remained. He found the door open; it was not quite dark, ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price

... or no cross-pall, it looked for all the world like a black 'Y', with a broad arm ending in each of the top corners of the shield, and the tail coming down into the bottom. You might see that cognizance carved on the manor, and on the stonework and woodwork of the church, and on a score of houses in the village, and it hung on the signboard over the door of the inn. Everyone knew the Mohune 'Y' for miles around, and a former landlord having called the inn the Why Not? in ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... destroying and rebuilding. One had to be cautious. He pointed out the head of a boy carved over one of the archways, the one survivor of a fatal subsidence many years ago, when the ground floor of one of the gigantic houses was converted into a shop, with plate-glass windows in lieu of the solid stonework. "Heave awa'!" cried a piping voice amid the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... goodly castle for its size," the knight said, as he drew rein and turned his horse so that his dame might get a better view of it. "There is a dry moat, which is lined with stonework. The walls are not very high, but they are well defended by those flanking towers, and the place could stand any sudden assault. I should say that it was about the same strength as our own. So far as I can see, the other arrangements ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... and to the chief men of the city, the building was begun according to the plans of Ventura, who, having laid the foundations of the vestibule and the temple, completely finished the vestibule, which he made very rich in pilasters and cornices of the Corinthian Order, with other carved stonework; while all the vaults in that work were made in like manner, with squares surrounded by mouldings, also in stone, and filled with rosettes. Afterwards, the octagonal temple was also carried to the height of the last cornice, from which the vaulting of the tribune was to rise, during the ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... apologies. 'He must overlook the unkempt condition of the fields. . . . Boisveyrac was not wont to make so poor a show . . . the estate, in fact, though not rich, had always been well kept up . . . the stonework was noted throughout New France, and every inch of timber (would M. le General observe?) thoroughly well seasoned. . . . Yes, those were the arms above the entrance—Noel quartering Tilly—two of the oldest families in the province . . . If M. le General ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... house. To sit in a room like the one I was sitting in, with the figures of the tapestry glimmering grey and lilac and purple in the twilight, the great bed, columned and curtained, looming in the middle, and the embers reddening beneath the overhanging mantelpiece of inlaid Italian stonework, a vague scent of rose-leaves and spices, put into the china bowls by the hands of ladies long since dead, while the clock downstairs sent up, every now and then, its faint silvery tune of forgotten ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... advance took place until very late. The small ancient church at Bradford-on-Avon in the south of England belongs to the Saxon period. The Saxon stonework exhibited in a few buildings like the church tower of Earl's Barton, Northamptonshire, is an attempt to imitate timber with stone, and has been called "stone carpentry."[2] Edward the Confessor's work in Westminster Abbey was not Saxon, but Norman, ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... groups of deities. The lower terrace, of which Dr. Leemans only guessed the existence, is now being excavated and photographed section by section. Only one section is kept open at any given time, because the earth is necessary to support the vast mass of stonework which forms the entire building, and it was for this reason, namely, to prevent the structure from breaking up, that this terrace was formerly banked up. It is found that this lower terrace is decorated with sculptures representing ordinary mundane scenes, the world being the basis on which ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... of this spire should be visible from her position in the room was a fact which Cytherea's idling eyes had discovered with some interest, and she was now engaged in watching the scene that was being enacted about its airy summit. Round the conical stonework rose a cage of scaffolding against the blue sky, and upon this stood five men—four in clothes as white as the new erection close beneath their hands, the fifth in the ordinary dark suit of ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... order and in a complete circle around the parapets of the towers, with their heads pointing inwards, and so lazily did they sit there, and so motionless was their whole mien, that except for their color, they might have been carved out of the stonework. ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... the gate rose high into the air, and the heavy roaring of the cave-tigers told that they too were taking their share of the melee. But the massive stonework of the walls hid all the actual engagement from our view, and which party was getting the upper hand we could not even guess. But the sounds told how tight a fight was being hammered out in those narrow boundaries, and my veins tingled to be once more back at the old trade, ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... against the old stonework and laughed deep in his chest. "Well, don't be frightened. I won't offer them. You're not a nest-building bird. You know I always liked your song, 'Me for the jolt of the breakers!' ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... night, the sense of being masoned up in the wall, grew, and grew, and grew upon him, till again and again he lifted himself convulsively from the floor, as if vast blocks of stone had been laid on him; as if he had been digging a deep well, and the stonework with all the excavated earth had caved in upon him, where he burrowed ninety feet beneath the clover. In the blind tomb of the midnight he stretched his two arms sideways, and felt as if coffined at not being able to extend them straight out, on ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... at the far end of the bridge. The cross he soon tired of, but the bit of red aroused his curiosity; it seemed almost square, like a large book or package, and was apparently propped up against the stonework that supported the bridge. What it was, he did not trouble to conjecture, and as Miss Clairville came out with several parcels which he took from her, he forgot the circumstance as he turned and walked a few steps with her. Thus, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... started to destroy, but remained to adorn with all the sweet abandon of unrestrained growth. Some of them had put forth brilliant blossoms of many hues, little spots of exquisite coloring against the sombre hue of the stonework and the deep green of the leaves. Everywhere nature had triumphed over science and skill. Everything was changed, and nature had shown herself a more perfect gardener than man. The gravel paths were embedded with soft green moss, studded with clumps of white and purple violets, whose ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... ancient church of Notre Dame only the walls remained. The roof had fallen, all the woodwork had perished in the flames, and the stonework was calcined by the heat. Above the arch of a door was a little row of angels' heads carved in stone, but when we touched them they fell to powder. The heat inside must have been terrific, for all the ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar

... than admire. The outside of the minster still shows traces of the image breakers of Zwingli's time, and yet the crumbling north portal remains beautiful, even in decay. As for the interior, it has an exceedingly bare and stript appearance; for, altho' there is good, solid stonework in the walls, the whole has been washed a foolish, Philistine white. The Romanesque of the architectural is said to be of particular interest to connoisseurs, and the queer archaic capitals must certainly attract the notice ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... broken. If frescoes adorned the corridors, they have been whitewashed; the ladies' chambers have been stripped of their rich arras. Only here and there we find a raftered ceiling, painted in fading colours, which, taken with the stonework of the chimney, and some fragments of inlaid panel-work on door or window, enables us to reconstruct the former ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... chapels be destroyed? Atheism will utilise, not destroy, the beautiful edifices which, once wasted on God, shall hereafter be consecrated for man. Destroy Westminster Abbey, with its exquisite arches, its glorious tones of soft, rich colour, its stonework light as if of cloud, its dreamy, subdued twilight, soothing as the 'shadow of a great rock in a weary land'? Nay, but reconsecrate it to humanity. The fat cherubs who tumble over guns and banners on soldiers' graves will fitly be removed to some spot ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... is of iron, idiot! and bolts on the inside with a great bar resting in the stonework. Are there no tools in ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... amount of freedom and allowed to exercise his personal fancy. The capitals of columns, the cusping of windows, and the ornaments were seldom repeated, but varied according to the taste of the craftsman. Very high finish was seldom attempted, the marks of the chisel often being left showing in the stonework. All this gave a warmth and exuberance of life to a fine Gothic building that makes a classical building look cold by comparison. The freedom with which new parts were built on to a Gothic building is another proof of the fact that it is not in ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... modern restoration or improvement was unknown. Better the unloosed rage of the fiend than the scrabble of self-complacent idiocy. The facade of the cathedral was as yet unencumbered by the blocks of new stonework, never to be carved, by which it is now defaced; the Church of St. Nicholas existed, (the last fragments of the niches of its gateway were seen by the writer dashed upon the pavement in 1840 to make room for the new "Hotel St. Nicholas"); the Gothic turret had ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... downstairs. In the middle of my tale, the servant stepp'd to the door, and return'd quietly. There was no lock on the inside. After a minute he went across, and drew the red curtains. The window had a grating within, of iron bars as thick as a man's thumb, strongly clamp'd in the stonework, and not four inches apart. Clearly, he was a man of few words; for, returning, he merely pull'd out his sword, and waited for ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... and every part of the interior of the temple glowed with burnished plates and studs of the precious metal. The cornices, which surrounded the walls of the sanctuary, were of the same costly material; and a broad belt or frieze of gold, let into the stonework, encompassed the whole exterior of ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... to the Westward of this Harbour is the Morie of Oamo or Oberia, for some told us it belong'd to the one and some to the other; it far Exceeds every thing of this Kind upon the whole Island. It is a long square of Stonework built Pyramidically; its base is 267 feet by 87 feet; at the Top it is 250 feet by 8 feet. It is built in the same manner as we do steps leading up to a Sun Dial or fountain erected in the Middle of a Square where there ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... covered slope, whose top had been smoothed and levelled by the hand of man, and from which on the far side rose the castle of Inverashiel, its stout and ancient framework disguised and masked by the modern addition to the building which faced the approach; a mass of gabled and turreted stonework in the worst style of nineteenth century architecture which in Scotland often took on a shape and semblance even more fantastically repulsive than it assumed in the south. The great tower that formed the principal remaining portion of the old building could just be discerned over the top of the ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce

... from this upper gallery was far more extended than the one below; but our party did not enjoy it much, it made them so giddy to look down; and although the gilded balustrade was extremely massive, and was built into the stonework in the firmest and most solid manner, Mrs. Holiday, and even Mr. George, were afraid to go near it; and the idea of leaning upon it, to look ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott

... went inwards in a quadrangular form, with less depth, however, than breadth. The space thus enclosed was called the proscenium. The front of the logeum towards the orchestra was ornamented with pilasters and small statues between them. The stage, erected on a foundation of stonework, was a wooden platform resting on rafters. The surrounding appurtenances of the stage, together with the rooms required for the machinery, were also of wood. The wall of the building, directly opposite to the seats of the spectators, was ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... they examined the wall. So far as they could see, the stonework bore the unusual load well, but in one spot there was a ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... Jean were very glad to hear so much gold was near them as would pay nine kings' ransoms. They took their small spades and dug little holes in the Camp of Rink, which is a great old circle of stonework, surrounded by a deep ditch, on the top of a hill above the house. But Jean was not a very good digger, and even Randal grew tired. They thought they would wait till they grew bigger, and then ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang

... familiar being Edward I and Queen Elizabeth. From Tudor times onward the once waste land in the immediate vicinity of castles and palaces was cultivated, and the gardens of the nobility along the Strand in London were full of beautiful stonework and statuettes. A writer in the sixteenth century, describing an English garden of his day, wrote: "Every garden of account hath its fish pond, ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess

... in no more. Of course the rowdy boys of the neighbourhood had been at work: many of these haggard windows were broken; the front door stood ajar, forced open; and idiot salacity, in white chalk, was smeared everywhere upon the pillars and stonework of ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... rule the supporting carpentry of these screens bears a strong resemblance to stonework; so imitative is it in treatment, that it is only by the texture of the wood and its lightness of construction that the distinction is made evident. Now a certain degree of modified imitation, where one craft models its forms of design upon those of another, using a different material, as in the ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack

... strictly before his eyes. For this end Chavannes reduced his palette almost to a monochrome, for this end he models in two flat tints, for this end he draws in huge undisciplined masses.... Mural decoration, if it form part of the wall, should be a variant of the stonework." One might take exception to the word "undisciplined"—Puvis was one of the most calculating painters that ever used a brush, and one of the most cerebral. His favourite aphorism was: "Beauty is character." His figures have been called ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... round the head of Loch Long and crossed a bridge, some words on the iron fixtures informing us that we were now passing from Argyllshire into Dumbartonshire. The coping on the bridge was of fresh, neatly clipped grass instead of the usual stonework we expected to find, and looked very remarkable; we saw nothing like it on ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... quite sure that this dam superintendent seldom went to the foot of the wall, or examined the face of it for any break in the stonework. Of course, the dam had stood secure for so many years that it seemed improbable that it would fail in ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson

... they left Les Andelys. At half-past eleven their guide stopped at a place where two high pillars, crowned with some heraldic stonework, flanked a huge iron gate. The wall in which it had been the opening had crumbled away, but the great gate still towered above the brambles and weeds which had overgrown its base. The Prussians made their way round it and advanced stealthily, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... like the house itself, of tufa,—a white stone peculiar to the shores of the Loire, and so soft that it lasts hardly more than two centuries. Numberless irregular holes, capriciously bored or eaten out by the inclemency of the weather, gave an appearance of the vermiculated stonework of French architecture to the arch and the side walls of this entrance, which bore some resemblance to the gateway of a jail. Above the arch was a long bas-relief, in hard stone, representing the four seasons, the faces already crumbling away and blackened. This bas-relief ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... to-day, it is sufficiently imposing to convey a powerful impression of the former size and magnificence of the monastic church. This fragment is the gracefully buttressed east-end of the choir, which rises from the level meadow-land to the east of the town. The stonework is now of a greenish-grey tone, but in the shadows there is generally a look of blue. Beyond the ruin and through the opening of the great east window, now bare of tracery, you see the purple moors, with the ever-formidable Roseberry Topping holding ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... of what Chordal calls the hyphen Corliss engine claim to have made a great advance by putting a post under the center of the frame, but whether in acknowledgment that the frame would be likely to go down or the stonework come up I could never make out. What I should fear would be that the stone would come up and take the frame with it. Every brick mason knows better than to bed mortar under the center of a window sill; and this putting a prop under the center of an engine girder seems ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various

... young Greek, like Tryphon, Son of Eutychos, for instance, (as friends remembered him with regret, as you may see him still on his tombstone in the British Museum) alive among the paler physical and intellectual lights of modern England, under the old monastic stonework of the Middle Age. That theatrical old Greek god never took the expressiveness, the lines of delicate meaning, such as were come into the face of the English lad, the physiognomy of his race; ennobled now, as if by the writing, the signature, there, of a grave intelligence, by grave information ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... is a much desecrated building that once belonged to the priory of Bodmin, it having been erected towards the end of the fifteenth century by Thomas Vivian, prior of Bodmin. In 1840 someone carried off a large amount of the priory's ancient stonework to Somerset, where it was placed in private grounds, but the Crown made an order for it to be returned ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath

... may be to the present building. Some doubt is thrown upon this conclusion by a proclamation of Archbishop Lee in 1537 sequestrating the Common Fund on the ground that "the Chapter-house is ruinous in walls, roof, and stonework generally, so that it is likely to fall." These words, it has been thought, can never have been applicable to the present Chapter-house, and it has been suggested therefore that there may have been another which has disappeared. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett

... had a disastrous effect on many churches reared in Saxon times. The Norman Conquest caused many of them to be replaced by more highly finished structures. But frequently, as we study the history written in the stonework of our churches, we find beneath coatings of stucco the actual walls built by Saxon builders, and an arch here, a column there, which link our own times with the distant past, when England was divided into eight kingdoms and when Danegelt was levied ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... standing next to the altar—a very fine and rich stonework of late Gothic style by the builder of the City Hall, M. de Layens—has been slightly damaged by the collapse of the ceiling, which chipped off the upper phiales. These broken pieces have been collected without any substantial ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... touch of her skirt, while once she laid a hand on my arm to guide me to a little dark closet the window of which was protected by a hingeless plate of iron, held in position by a horizontal bar fitting into the stonework on ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... the centre of the court, where stood a fountain; for before it was turned to the purposes of a jail once this place had been a palace. Here she set her mistress on the ground with her back against the stonework, and dashed water in her face till presently she ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... high, its hipped roof broken by handsome pedimental dormers with round-topped windows. The front is of brick laid up in characteristic Flemish bond, while the other walls are of plastered rubble stone masonry, the brickwork and stonework being quoined together at the front corners. A broad plaster coving is the principal feature of the simple molded cornice, and one notes the much used double belt formed by two projecting courses of brick at the second-floor level. ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins

... Road, is rather a pretty church of brick with red-tiled roof, and some ornamental stonework on the south face. It was built in 1882, designed by Sir A. Blomfield, and the foundation-stone was laid by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. The chancel was added ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... column, Barbaric, wonderful, a thing to kneel to! Over the portal stand the four gilt horses, Gilt hoof in air, and wide distended nostril, Fiery, untamed, as in the days of Nero. Skyward, a cloud of domes and spires and crosses; Earthward, black shadows flung from jutting stonework. High over all the slender Campanile Quivers, and seems a falling ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... percolated. Standing just at the entrance, and turning round, Henri discovered that, thanks to the height of the opening into the big hall beneath the fort, he was able to look directly into it, though the far end was hidden from view by the stonework at the top. A swift glance round the chamber which they had reached showed him thick masonry all about, steel beams above, and iron rails of circular pattern on the floor, on which the guns had ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... identifiable; one of grotesques and animals; one of uncouth toilers—a shepherd and woodman and so forth—with God the Father on the keystone. What these mean beyond the broad fact that religion is for all, I cannot say. Angels are above, and surmounting the doorway is Christ. Among all this dark stonework one is conscious now and then of little pink touches which examination shows to be the feet ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... climbed the western hill. Below our feet, beneath a sky that the wind had swept clean of clouds, was the valley; a broad bowl, shallow, filled with the purple of smoke-wreaths. And above the mass of red roofs there soared the golden stonework of the cathedral tower. It was a vision, the last word of a great art. I looked at her. I was moved, and I knew that the glory of it ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... building. It is no spacious arch, but a small, lowly door, passing through which, and pushing aside an inner screen that partly keeps out an exceedingly chill wind, you find yourself in a dim nook of the Abbey, with the busts of poets gazing at you from the otherwise bare stonework of the walls. Great poets, too; for Ben Jonson is right behind the door, and Spenser's tablet is next, and Butler's on the same side of the transept, and Milton's (whose bust you know at once by its resemblance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... of white marble decorates the old stonework of the aisles, in the shape of altars, obelisks, sarcophagi, and busts. Most of these memorials are commemorative of people locally distinguished, especially the deans and canons of the Cathedral, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... me—save me—I shall fall!" she cried. She clutched at a strong stem of ivy which was climbing up the wall close by, and so supported herself; but it was evident that she could not long retain her hold in that constrained position, even if the stonework did not give way beneath her feet. All the party had now gathered in the open space below, and some began to climb the path by which she had mounted. Frank, in the meanwhile, was making desperate efforts ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... building-steward ventured to suggest to her that, Sir Blount having deputed to her the power to grant short leases in his absence, she should have a distinctive agreement with Swithin, as between landlord and tenant, with a stringent clause against his driving nails into the stonework of such an historical memorial. She replied that she did not wish to be severe on the last representative of such old and respected parishioners as St. Cleeve's mother's family had been, and of such a well-descended family as his father's; so that it would only be necessary for the steward to ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... condition the north-west tower of the nave had to be pulled down. It was rebuilt on an entirely different plan by Mr. George Austin, who, with his son, also conducted a good deal of repairing and other work in the cathedral and the buildings connected with it. A good deal of the external stonework had to be renewed, but the work was carried out judiciously, and only where it was absolutely necessary. On the west side of the south transept a turret has been pulled down and set up again stone by stone. ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers

... into the gloom was anguish, yet to know that he was the man by whom the city should be saved was sweet. I sat down on the spot where my steps were stayed. It was close to the wall, where there is a ledge of stonework round the basement of the tower. There I sat down to wait ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant

... lichened stonework, What I owed you in my lone work, Noon and night! Whensoever faint or ailing, Letting go my grasp and ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... him by Constanza. He set his men to work to turn the wheel, and at once became aware of the groaning and grating sound that attends the motion of clumsy machinery. Gazing eagerly up into the dun roof above him, he saw slowly descending a portion of the stonework of which it was formed. It was a clever enough contrivance for those unskilled days, and showed a considerable ingenuity on the part of some owner of the Castle ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... was the sort of thing that you customarily met from field to field when hunting in that comfortable county. Such little impediments were the ordinary food of a real Blazer, who was supposed to add another foot of stonework and a sod of turf when desirous of making himself conspicuous in his moments of splendid ambition. Twenty years ago I rode in Galway now and then, and I found the six-foot walls all shorn of their glory, and that men whose ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope

... lofty, severe, bare nave stretching between the brightly coloured aisles. Raising her head a little, she examined the high altar, which she considered too plain, having no taste for the cold grandeur of stonework, but preferring the gilding and gaudy colouring of the side chapels. Those on the side of the Rue du Jour looked greyish in the light which filtered through their dusty windows, but on the side of the markets the sunset was lighting up the stained ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... stopped at Bourges, and was fascinated by the amazing stonework of the crypt. How the mediaeval cathedral-builders were able to accomplish such intricate work with the means at their command is still one of the great mysteries. There is to-day in the United States no group of workmen who ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... always thinly clad (both through the state of his wardrobe and his dread of effeminate comfort), settled his bony shoulders against the rough stonework, and his heels upon a groyne, and gave his subordinate a nod, which meant, "Make no fuss, but out with it." Cadman, a short square fellow with crafty eyes, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... corner of the cell there was a board let into the stonework. There was a thin pallet and two blankets rolled up together during the day in a corner of the cell that served for bedding, but so thin and hard was the pallet that one might almost as well have slept on the board. For the first few ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... his strange, dark rages and his devotion to the church. It was the church building he cared for; and yet his soul was passionate for something. He laboured cleaning the stonework, repairing the woodwork, restoring the organ, and making the singing as perfect as possible. To keep the church fabric and the church-ritual intact was his business; to have the intimate sacred building utterly in his own hands, and to make the form of service complete. There ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... twelve o'clock crossed the Moor into the town. The streets were nearly deserted now, and the waving lamp-flames only lighted up rows of grey shop-shutters, and strips of white paving upon which his step echoed as his passed along. He turned to the right, and halted before an archway of heavy stonework, which was closed by an iron studded pair of doors. This was the entrance to the gaol, and over it a lamp was fixed, the light enabling the wretched ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... forcing out tombstones and curbs, and everywhere the rank grass grew high up into the bushes. But greatest of all dilapidations was that of the church itself; many of the windows had been broken, and were left unrepaired; here and there a great piece of stonework had fallen away; the outer gates of the porch hung loose on one hinge. Stella entered the porch and sat for a moment on ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... glorious conclusion? It rose up in the midst of the city, always visible from near and far. The inside was even more magnificent than the exterior. The fittings and furniture were of the richest. The light mellow tone of the white stonework was enhanced by the fleeting visions of colour that spread across from the sunlit stained-glass windows, which still, in spite of time and restoration, add enormously to the beauty of ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson

... castle, where the stonework had been battered down by time, man and the elements, she saw several servants at work. "You have trustworthy servants, Lord Saxondale. I have tried ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon

... thus tortured to frenzy, to make sport in the amphitheatre. However, there was daintiness joined with cruelty: the Romans did not like the smell of blood, though they enjoyed the sight of it, and all the solid stonework was pierced with tubes, through which was conducted the stream of spices and saffron, boiled in wine, that the perfume might overpower the ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... broad steps, in which lay the bed of a pebbly stream occupying half of the narrow way. The walls of the gardens on each side bulged out, coated with a grey, leprous growth; umbrageous trees drooped over, foliage rained down, here and there an ivy plant thickly mantled the stonework, and the chequered verdure, which only left glimpses of the blue sky above, made the light very soft and greeny. Halfway down Helene would stop to take breath, gazing at the street-lamp which hung there, and listening to the merry laughter in the gardens, whose doors ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... the Castle Hill; and there was the grey of stonework against a bright blue sky, and green of grass and trees against the grey, and mountainous clouds of dazzling white hung over a molten sea; and because of the beauty of it all, Beth burst into ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... asked to report on it. He stated that it was very ruinous and ready to break down into the church; that the plates were rotten, the girders quite rotted through, and all the lead so thin that it could not be repaired; that three corners also of the stonework were so rent and crooked that they would need to be taken down. "He supposed that the making good of the stone tower, the taking down of the old spire and putting up of a new, and to sufficiently cover the same with lead would cost L1,000 over and besides the old ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer

... swung the rich, resonant voice of the musician, the words clear and cleancut, and of such a penetrating sweetness that the ironsheathed warrior above all unconsciously leaned still further over the stonework, and, hardened though he was, made no pretense to stop slow tears that came to his eyes and fell, drop by drop, to glitter like diamonds among the rough ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True

... was very lofty. By a tremendous wind the ball and cross had been bent down, and looked dangerous. This steeple-climber raised ladders one after the other, assisted by blocks and ropes, and secured each in succession to the stonework with clamps. When he got near the top of the spire the work became more difficult, and the spectators anxiously watched him as he fixed the last ladder. Having accomplished this feat, Wootton stepped from ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... consisted of two walls—the scarp and counterscarp,—between which ran a terraced platform; the exterior wall, slightly sloping, was defended by embrasures between which the archer could place himself in safety, in an angle of the stonework, so soon as he had shot his arrow. The interior wall was also crested with battlements. The curvilinear rampart did not present projecting angles, the salients of which, Vitruvius tells us, could not resist the repeated blows of the siege machinery of those days. ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... century. It was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and in olden times must have blazed with gorgeous colours. The roof has fallen; little remains of its former beauty save the lancet windows. The double piscina and the sedilia are still in fair preservation, and we are shown the round holes in the stonework once filled with the pegs ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist

... she walked slowly across the deserted Terrace and, pausing by the parapet, laid her hand on the stonework. Still in silence she looked ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... of that second voice Maurice started and looked at Lucia. She had suddenly grasped at the stonework before her, and stood looking with passionate eagerness over the carved figure of the dying Duke towards the altar. He almost shuddered at the intensity of that gaze—the rigidity of intolerable suspense in her whole figure; but he could only ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... met his gaze filled him with horror. The room was on fire in several places and in a corner, near the chimney piece, rested Arnold Baxter, pinned down by a section of brick and stonework that had fallen. He had been hit in the head, and from the wound the ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer

... is a matter that can be well dispensed with until the general design has been determined, the architect suggests as in harmony with the treatment, Westerly, R.I. granite for the body of the cathedral, with trimmings of carved capitals, bases, columns, belts, arches and other ornamental stonework of a Georgia marble. The granite is cream color, with a suspicion of red, and the marble is of the same shade but a trifle darker and more positive. Both from chemical and physical tests they are apparently ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... for the protection of small vessels, which, in its unfinished state, is not yet visible above the water. The consequence was that, at a distance of about half a mile from the landing-steps, we rowed straight on to the submerged stonework, but fortunately got off again very quickly, without having sustained any damage. On landing, we found ourselves opposite the Custom House, a fine building, with which we ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... distance. It was covered with lichen and moss, and showed gaps here and there where the mortar had crumbled away and the stones fallen in a heap upon the ground; while in other places, the tangled growth of ivy vines almost entirely obscured the stonework. ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell

... blockhouses in the town, Capron fired a few shots, all of which took effect, and he adds: "This firing terminated the action, as the Spanish garrison were attempting to escape." Colonel Comba says there was a breach in the stonework large enough for his men to enter, and that this had been made by the artillery; General Chaffee says resistance had been greatly affected by the artillery, and Bonsal adds, the garrison resisted the last advance made by the infantry ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... and gazed round at the sculptured stonework, and turned to my guide-book, and looked at the print of the spot. It was correct to a pillar; but wanted the central ornament of the quadrangle. This, however, was but a slight subsequent erection, which ought not ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... which was then built at that end of the church. There are now three round-headed recesses in the central portion of the wall, those at the extremities containing narrow windows; a band of chequered stonework is carried across the space beneath them, and a small circular window inserted above. It may be mentioned here that the pointed arch has generally been adopted in the new work, to distinguish it from the old, but the characteristic ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... seats for the clergy, forming a sloping gallery, and consisting of eleven risers and eleven treads, so that, according to the method of seating adopted, there are five or six or eleven rows of seats. There is no vestige of a special episcopal seat in the centre, but the stonework has been disturbed; for some of the seats are built with portions of the moulded base of the marble revetment of the building. Underneath the seats runs a narrow semicircular passage originally well lighted through ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... the summit, lay in the moat beneath, fixed as they had been for centuries, with vegetation growing over them. Some of the walls, undermined and shaken from their foundations, took strange, oblique angles, yet refused to fall. Marks of cannon-balls were indented on the stonework of the battered gateway, which still remained a gateway—probably the very same under which Queen Elfrida, "fair and false," had offered to ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... the window, and in an instant she was clinging to it, pressing up against it with her body, her fingers gripping and clutching at it as a rat, trapped in a well, claws madly at a projecting bit of stonework. It was at least something solid out ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler



Words linked to "Stonework" :   cyclopean masonry



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