ON THE PRICE OF BUILDING MATERIALS, ETC. 439 



Tennis court at Windsor is paved with tiles at is. 6d. in i533> 

 and paving tile is purchased in 1534 at Bridewell for is. ^d. 

 the hundred. In 1537 paving tiles cost is. the hundred at 

 Oxford; in 1451 they cost 5^. 8d. at Dartford and 4^. id. at 

 Dover, are cheap at Norwich, and are only 3.$-. at the Moor, 

 one of Henry's hunting seats. In 1556 Magdalen College, 

 Oxford, buys paving tiles at %d. and 6d. the dozen, and in 1560 

 King's College, Cambridge, at is. i\d. the score. Corpus, 

 Oxford, in 1562 buys tiles for paving the church at lod. the 

 dozen, and Magdalen in 1560 at is. The tiles for paving the 

 Queen's tennis court in London (1568) are described as twelve 

 inches broad and cost iSs. the hundred. I have referred to 

 the green Flanders tile of 1674. In the same year paving tile 

 costs 6s. 6d. the hundred, and bricks for the quire at Magdalen 

 nearly is. a piece. At Woolwich, in 1578, paving tile costs 

 i6s. 8d. the hundred, this being the last entry of this character. 

 There is very little information as to the price of bricks in 

 the early part of the fifteenth century. After the middle of the 

 century the entries are frequent, but interrupted. They are 

 ultimately nearly continuous. The facts are accounted for 

 partly by the reason that many of the accounts are derived from 

 districts in which stone was the more obvious material for 

 building, and that in all places brick was a luxury in architec- 

 ture, and, in comparison with stone readily obtained, was dear ; 

 partly because brick was not, till large structures were con- 

 structed from it, employed except for special purposes. It 

 would have been wholly misleading if I had given in my 

 averages, or employed for my averages, entries of small pur- 

 chases, for a few dozens of bricks are often so costly that they 

 would have confused the whole of what I had to infer. 

 Hence I have rarely employed any entry of bricks except by 

 the thousand, because in this kind of quantity they were 

 employed for substantial objects. So excellent were the bricks 

 made in the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, so carefully 

 chosen was the material, and so well was that material mani- 

 pulated, that they are almost if not quite indestructible, and 



