Historic buildings on the Mathews Court Green have been getting some badly-needed brickwork over the past couple of months. Masons from Dominion Traditional Building Group of Marshall, Virginia, repointed some portions of two of the brick walls on the historic courthouse, then started last week on the more difficult task of repairing the 1790s-era jail, which had a huge bulge on the north wall and a smaller bulge on the west wall, along with other spots that needed repointing. Mason Terry Dubeau was hard at work repointing joints last Wednesday, July 29. She said that when demolition began on the north wall two days earlier, the entire bulge “all came down at once.” What was left was a large area where the outer layer of brick was missing. The wall consists of three layers, an outer layer made of bricks that were dried closer to the fire inside the kiln and thus turned out harder and redder, and two layers made of softer, orange-colored brick dried farther from the source of heat. The ...