Also 4 frestane, 6 freese stone, 7 friestane, frise-stone. [f. FREE a. + STONE sb.; a transl. of OF. franche pere, where the adj. means ‘of excellent quality’; cf. FRANK a.2 5.]
1. Any fine-grained sandstone or limestone that can be cut or sawn easily.
c. 1320. The Seuyn Sages (W.), 3035.
| The knyght gat masons many ane, | |
| And grat them hew ful faire fre-stane. |
1463. Bury Wills (Camden), 37. An ymage of our lady, sittyng or stondyng, in an howsyng of free stoon.
1587. Harrison, England, II. iii. (1877), I. 71. Divers goodly houses builded four square for the most part of hard freestone or brick, with great numbers of lodgings and chambers in the same for students.
1640–1. Kirkcudbr. War-Comm. Min. Bk. (1855), 67. He hes use for certaine friestane for building.
1662. Gerbier, Princ., 24. As for Free-stone, Portland Stone works well, and makes a good union with Bricks, yet cannot be compared with Marble.
1773. Brydone, Sicily, xv. (1809), 172. They [the streets] are all paved with white free-stone, which not only creates a great dust, but from its colour is likewise so offensive to the eyes, that most of the people here are remarkably weak sighted.
1796. Kirwan, Elem. Min. (ed. 2), II. 18. According to Dr. Hill, the Alluminous Ore of Whitby is sometimes a grey Freestone.
1878. F. S. Williams, Midl. Railw., 367. The church on our left, the handsome embattled tower of which is chequered with flint and freestone.
† b. A slab or piece of such stone. Obs.
c. 1475. Pict. Voc., in Wr.-Wülcker, 768. Hec timeria, a frestone.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 570. Toads haue bin found in the Middle of a Free-Stone.
1712. Hearne, Collect. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), III. 412. A White Free Stone is laid over Mr. Wm. Joyner’s Grave.
2. attrib. and Comb., as freestone house, † mason, ornament, passage, quarry; † freestone-colored a., of the color of freestone.
1600. Shaks., As You Like It, IV. iii. 25.
| I saw her hand, she has a leatherne hand | |
| A *freestone coloured hand. |
1665–6. Wood, Life (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), II. 72. Died of a violent fit of the stone in the larg *free-stone house.
1703. in Willis & Clark, Cambridge (1886), II. 211. Paid the *freestone Mason his bills in full.
1726. Amherst, Terræ Fil., xliv. 235. What! are there no living ornaments in Oxford? Are its inanimate, its *freestone ones its greatest glory?
1766. Entick, London, IV. 357. Dodson’s court, a pretty large open place, with a *free-stone passage into Budge-row.
1776. Adam Smith, W. N., I. xi. III. I. 186. The value of a *freestone quarry, for example, will necessarily increase with the increasing improvement and population of the country round about it.
