Better late than never

Yesterday evening I was reading about Westminster Abbey in the book noticed at reference 1, detailed at reference 2 and fully illustrated at reference 3. You can also buy a modern, paperback version from Amazon.

Not for the first time, I came across the word 'ashlar', which I think I have taken to be a sort of fine grained stone, probably some sort of limestone, good for the fancy stone work of large churches. For some reason yesterday evening I got around to looking the word up, to find that it is not a sort of stone at all, rather a particular way of working with stone, in which each block is carefully cut to fit in with its neighbours, to the point where the use of mortar is almost superfluous.

While the faces of ashlar blocks are often square, they may be some other kind of rectangle, in the way of bricks, and need not be rectangular at all. Their cutting to fit with each other is the defining feature.

Often used to face up walls and pillars, the interior of which might be mortar bound stone rubble.

The same sort of thing sometimes happens when reading Maigret. You come across a word that you don't know but guess the meaning, which seems to work OK for a bit. Then you get around to looking it up to find that you were quite wrong.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/03/a-bit-of-heritage.html.

Reference 2: Westminster Abbey, historically described - Feasey, Micklethwaite and Bell - 1899.

Reference 3: https://www.anglotopia.net/british-history/archives-westminster-abbey-1899/. With thanks for the use of one of their pictures, taken from reference 2. Better than I could manage with my telephone.