486 ON THE PRICE OF BUILDING MATERIALS. 



building the library are still extant. Most persons are agreed 

 that certain portions of one quadrangle are not much later 

 than the founder's time. Perhaps the stone-roofed muniment- 

 room is still older, and belongs to buildings erected on the 

 spot at a time when the site of this, the most ancient acade- 

 mical corporation, was parcel of the estate belonging to the 

 Abbot of Reading. Much information is to be found as to 

 the materials employed upon the buildings of this society among 

 the rolls of the procurators and chaplains, who generally took 

 account of this part of the college expenditure. 



Sometimes the corporation whose accounts have passed 

 through my hands possessed a large number of houses or 

 tenements. This, for instance, was the case, as my reader 

 will recognise from the rental annexed to the second volume, 

 with the provost, brethren, and sisters of GOD'S House in 

 Southampton. As this corporation superintended all repairs 

 needed for these tenements, the annual purchase of materials 

 is very considerable. 



Lastly, it sometimes happens that among the sources of 

 income possessed by corporations are tile manufactories. Thus 

 at Wye, part of the estate of Battle Abbey, large numbers of 

 tiles were annually made and sold. Our forefathers do not 

 seem to have made bricks up to the. close of the fourteenth 

 century, but to have preferred wood and plaster-work when 

 they did not build of stone. But they made every kind of 

 tiles. 



It is exceedingly difficult to give any tabular view of the 

 market price at which most of these materials were bought 

 or sold, since differences in the siT-e and quality of the 

 article, and in the distance of the manufactory from the place 

 where the article was in demand, are general, and cannot 

 be always interpreted with sufficient precision. There are, 

 I fear, no articles employed in building of which such a 

 tabular value can be exhibited as will denote the rise and 

 fall of prices with any exactitude, except it be lath-nails, and 

 perhaps plain tiles. 



