Arch. Also 5 lege-, ligement. [app. f. LEDGE sb. + -MENT.]
1. ‘A string-course or horizontal suit of mouldings, such as the base-mouldings, &c., of a building’ (Gloss. Terms Archit., 1850). Also ledgement-table.
1435. Contract Fotheringhay Ch., in Dugdale, Monast. (1673), III. II. 163. When he hath … set his ground table-stones, and his ligements, and the wall thereto withyn and without.
1443. in Willis & Clark, Cambridge (1886), I. 385. They … shal … do be made … iiije xvj fote of legement table…. And they shal haue for euery ciiij fote of the same legement … xxxiijs. iiijd.
1849–50. Weale, Dict. Terms, Ledgment.
2. (See quots.)
1842. Gwilt, Archit., Gloss., Ledgement, the development of a surface, or the surface of a body stretched out on a plane, so that the dimensions of the different sides may be easily ascertained.
1845. Gloss. Terms Archit. (ed. 4), 287, note. When an apartment, a roof, or other complex structure, is delineated by having its plan and other component surfaces laid out or developed upon the paper, each in its proper relation to the plan as if the whole had been originally constructed by folding together and was now laid flat, the structure is said to be laid in ledgement.
