436 ON THE PRICE OF BUILDING MATERIALS, ETC. 



proximity to such small timber as would supply laths in abun- 

 dance must have reduced the price. But it is not easy to 

 account for some very low prices, as at Apuldrum and Sel- 

 borne, where they are not half the price which prevails else- 

 where. Selborne, to be sure, is in the immediate neighbour- 

 hood of beech woods, which were probably far more abundant 

 and extensive four centuries ago than they even are now, and 

 Apuldrum is in the wooded district of the Sussex Wealden, 

 where the ancient ironworks were carried on. But beech and 

 oak timber must have been plentiful in the neighbourhood of 

 other localities where the article is much dearer. 



The price of laths illustrates with great significance and 

 clearness that remarkable and ubiquitous decline in general 

 prices which is so characteristic of the last decade of the 

 fifteenth and the first three or four of the sixteenth centuries. 

 I shall comment on the high and low prices of this epoch 

 further on, but the reader will notice that the price of laths is 

 lowest in the last ten years of the fifteenth century, and remains 

 very low till 1550. Nor does the price of this article, the chief 

 ingredient in the value of which is labour, exhibit any notable 

 rise as compared with that of other values, towards the close 

 of the period. Laths by the thousand increase in price by only 

 fifty per cent, during the last thirty years, and by the load only 

 a little more than seventy, the growth in the latter being mainly 

 effected by the rise in the Cambridge loads, and the inclusion 

 of those entries in the figures from which the averages are 

 deduced. On this topic again, I reserve my comment, till the 

 part of my work is reached in which I purpose to deal with 

 general prices, and their relations to the money values of many 

 commodities. 



TILES, BRICKS, AND SLATES. There is no slight difficulty 

 in interpreting the entries and tabulating the prices of tiles ; 

 and I am not a little concerned lest in dealing with the various 

 kinds of this article, 1 may have erred in some of my infer- 

 ences. The names given to tiles are numerous. The word is 

 occasionally generic, i.e. it is employed to designate any kind 



