Notice of the shingled roof of the tower of the Canongate Tolbooth, Edinburgh / by John Alexander Smith.

Date:
[1871?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notice of the shingled roof of the tower of the Canongate Tolbooth, Edinburgh / by John Alexander Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    the Atlantic Ocean,—and America, with its ahundant forests, is now the country where in all prohability shingles are most extensively used. In many fabric rolls and bills for buUding in old times, you constantly find the cost of Scindulce shingles, and of shingle naHs for attaching them^ In the recent Imperial Dictionary of John OgHvie, LL.D., we find the word Shincde thus explained. [German, Schindel; Greek, (7xtv8aX/.os; Latin, Scindula, from Scindo to Divide; Gothic, Scheiden.] A wooden tile • shingles are smaU pieces of thin wood, used like slates for covermg a roof or buHding. They are from 8 to 12 inches long, and abput 4 inches broad, thicker on one edge than the other. In our first En-lish Latin Dictionary, the Promptokium Pabvulorum, a.d. 144U, occurs the word Schyngyl, and Chyngyl or Chyngle; bordys for helyngys of howsys-Scmc^^Za. The word is sometimes written shin- dies (HoUand's Pliny, b. xvi., c. 10.) Piers Ploughman terms ISoahs ark a shynglede shup. They were used, as I have shown, m Anglo- Saxon times, and have never since been wholly laid aside, being moi-e easUy obtained, where wood was plentiful, than tiles or slates, and also liahter which would cause an advantage in the cost of the timber framing. It is not easy, however, to make them water-tight, and hence they answer best on any vertical surface, or the steep incline of u spire, where they throw off the rain eifectuaUy. I am indebted for. these last notes from the Promptorium and Piers Ploughman, &c., to tbe abounding knowledge of m Albert Way, A.M., F.S.A., and Hon. Mem. S.A. Scot. To return, however, to our Canongate Tolbooth, I may quote the detailed description of this picturesque building, given in tlie interesting work, The Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time, by Dr Daniel ^\ ilson, vol ii., 1848, p. 72; and I am able, through the politeness of the publishers of the work, Messrs Hugh Paton & Sons, also to add the woodcut referred to in the opening paragraph. ■ The Canongate Tolbooth-(a view of which is annexed)-has long been a favourite subject for the artist's pencil, as one ot the mos picturesque edifices of the Old Town. It forms the court-house ana jaU of the burgh; it was erected in the reign of James VI., soon after o abolition of religious houses had left this ancient dependency o e Abbey free to govern itself. Even then, however, Adam BothweU, the Protestant commendator .of Holyrood, retained some portion of the ancient