444 ON THE PRICE OF BUILDING MATERIALS, ETC. 



In one or two places, as at Selborne in 1451, shingles are 

 bought for roofing at 3.5-. 4^. the thousand, and at Battle in 

 1502 at the same price and less. 



Tiles and slates were fastened to the rafter laths with pins. 

 These are bought at very various prices by two measures, the 

 bushel (sometimes the quarter) and the thousand. Apparently 

 the bushel generally contained four thousand, at least the pro- 

 portionate prices of the two measures suggest and confirm this 

 view. Tile pins are apparently a bye product, i.e. the manu- 

 facture was not a special business, but practised by men and 

 even women and children in their spare time. They are always 

 considerably dearer in Oxford than elsewhere, for though the 

 pins are generally described as slate pins, it does not appear 

 that slate were dearer than tile pins in Oxford, on the 

 occasions in which the latter were purchased under the name. 

 They are cheap in London and at Sion, at which latter place 

 they are bought by the quarter. In the averages given at the 

 conclusion of the chapter only tile pins are reckoned in the 

 decennial values, though sometimes slate pins are no dearer 

 than the others. The rise in price after 1540 resembles that of 

 the increase in value of bricks and tiles. 



TIMBER AND STONE. There are numerous entries of build- 

 ing materials, chiefly derived from the accounts of buildings 

 still in existence, as at York Minster, the colleges at Oxford 

 and Cambridge, and divers royal works, out of which, varied as 

 the names are, it will be possible to derive some important 

 conclusions. 



The most costly kind of timber is wainscot. This is bought 

 by the long hundred of 120, and by the piece, and denoted at 

 that day, as it still denotes, logs of the best-seasoned and 

 soundest oak timber, free from cracks or any other defect. 

 Twenty-five entries of wainscot occur by the hundred between 

 1415 and 1476. The most remarkable fact about this article is 

 the steady rise in the price. During the fifteenth century there 

 are twelve entries. The lowest price is 2,6s. 6d. in 1415, the 

 highest 66s. %d. in 1450, the average being 43^. 6\d. The 



