ON THE PRICE OF BUILDING MATERIALS, ETC. 435 



the most perfect specimens of this workmanship may be seen 

 in the ruins of the monastic buildings at Canterbury, near the 

 Cathedral, where arches are turned in brick with singular exact- 

 ness and with very low crowns. Nothing but the goodness of 

 the material and the complete finish of the work would have 

 allowed such arches. 



The habitations of the poorer classes were and remained 

 mere hovels, in the construction of which no pains were taken, 

 and no improvement was contemplated. They were probably 

 what is known as wattle and dab, or even in some places mud 

 huts with thatched roofs. 



LATHS. The use of these articles was universal. They 

 were employed for the completion of houses built on a timber 

 frame, such as are still common in Oxford, for ceilings, and 

 even for lattice work to windows. They were made of oak and 

 beech, are described as sap and hart, or hart and sort. They 

 are also curtys, or short and long, the difference of price between 

 these last two kinds being comparatively slight ; or bastard or 

 single, which appears to be the same as sap laths. The inferior 

 kind is considerably cheaper than hart laths. We also find 

 straw and stone laths, asseres, splints and findulse. 



They are sold by the hundred and the thousand, by the bunch 

 or bundle at Cambridge and London, where this quantity is 

 sometimes equivalent to the half hundred (see Vol. Ill, 422, ii), 

 sometimes (Vol. Ill, 423, ii) to the hundred, and by the load, 

 bigute, or plaustrate, which is said to contain three thousand. 

 If this measure be taken universally, the price was much lower 

 in large than it was in small quantities. Sometimes great laths 

 were much dearer than small, as at Cambridge in 1536, and 

 unless we are to conclude that the article was much costlier in 

 Cambridge than in London, the load in the former place must 

 have held much more than it did in the latter, for in 1568 the 

 Cambridge load costs 35^., in Eltham iSs., in London 2U. 



There is considerable variety in the price, even where the 

 article is of the best quality, as far as can be judged. Lath- 

 rending was no doubt carried on, as now, in the woods, and 



