A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



cross laths, to which they are fixed by a wooden 

 peg (lath-nail) through a hole in the upper end 

 of the ' slat.' This peg is mentioned under the 

 name of ' tyle-pynne ' in a steward's account at 

 Gloucester in 1493-4.! Crests are the stones on 

 the ridge of the roof. 



Again, in 1482, at Slaughter, a roof 

 repaired 2 : 



' 



5 loads of tiles o 



Crests o 



Mortar, lime and the laying it on . o 

 Workman, carpenter, and timber . o 

 To the man for ' ledding,' and work- 

 man's expenses i 



10 

 I 



5 

 4 



was 



d. 

 o 

 o 



2 

 10 



6 8 



Total 



7 8 



In 1395 lath-nails were is. 6J. and laths 

 6s. 8d. per thousand. 3 Roofing was done in 1412 

 at 5*. for 1,000 tiles. 4 Walls were also made of 

 stone as now. Stones for a wall round ' Hasel- 

 angre ' (Brimpsfield) were dug at ^d. a day, and 

 the building done at is. 6d. per perch, including 

 cost of carriage. 5 Walling is the only local craft 

 still in common use. Very few men do 'slatting' 

 properly, and the modern work seldom lasts so 

 long as the old. Wattling, I believe, survives in 

 the Campden district, where traditions lasted long 

 unbroken, in consequence of the late date of the 

 inclosure. 



Rough Oolitic Limestone, suitable for walls 

 and road-metal, is quarried in nearly every parish 

 in the Cotswolds. In the south the chief 

 building-stone is freestone, dug at Cleeve, 

 Leckhampton, Painswick, Smith's Cross, and 

 Brockhampton. In the northern Cotswolds 

 ' yellow-bed ' is chiefly worked for this purpose, 

 quarries having been opened at Temple Guiting, 

 Bourton on the Hill, Ebrington, and Chipping 

 Campden. The Great, or Upper, Oolite is 

 quarried at Minchinhampton, and is durable if 

 properly seasoned. Good tilestones of Stonesfield 

 slate are obtained at Sevenhampton, Eyford, 

 Notgrove, and Througham, and rougher tiles of 

 flaggy oolite have been got in many parts of the 

 Cotswolds. 



Gravel and sand, generally rather intermixed, 

 occur near Cheltenham and in other localities. 

 The gravel is chiefly composed of the rubble of 

 the limestone, but can be used for paths and 

 drives. On Cleeve Hill is a considerable deposit 

 of finer sand, which was at one time exported to 

 the Staffordshire Potteries. Down the Moreton 

 Valley and the lower Severn stretch the gravel 

 strata known as Northern Drift, which has been 

 worked at Bredon, Shuthonger Common, Twyn- 

 ing Green, and Wainlode Hill. 



Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xii, App. ix, 423. 

 Mins. Accts. bdle. 853, No. 7. 

 Ibid. bdle. 852, No. I. 

 Ibid. bdle. 852, No. 5. 

 Ibid. bdle. 850, No. 22. 



The Keuper Marls contain various valuable 

 deposits ; ochre at Wick Rocks, near Mangots- 

 field ; gypsum at Aust Cliff; and sulphate of 

 strontium, which is worked at Yate and Wickwar 

 and exported to Germany for use in beet-sugar 

 refineries. There are also four groups of saline 

 springs which, if they have not given rise to any 

 large industries, have been the origin of Spas at 

 Tewkesbury, Cheltenham, Gloucester, and 

 Clifton. 



To this list of natural sources of wealth must 

 be added the abundance of forest-trees, which 

 not only gave rise to the tanneries of Tewkes- 

 bury, Gloucester, and Bristol, and to innumer- 

 able modern timber industries, but made Bristol, 

 till the I ;th century, one of the chief ship- 

 building ports of the kingdom. In the 1 6th 

 century sieve-making, mainly a wooden industry, 

 was carried on at Gloucester. 6 



The water-power, which has been mentioned 

 as so valuable for fulling and dyeing cloth, was 

 the occasion for the foundation of various other 

 textile industries, such as silk, linen, and cottons. 

 Silk must have been used at an early period for 

 church embroidery (with a view to which an 

 abbot of Cirencester in the I3th century wrote 

 a book, ' De Natura RerumJ explaining how to 

 keep silk-worms) ; but the art of weaving it was 

 probably introduced by French refugees of the 

 1 6th and I7th centuries. In 1637 silk- weaving 

 was being practised at Gloucester. 7 At Chipping 

 Campden and Blockley, about the year 1700, 

 there were erected two silk-throwing mills, 

 which made Campden famous for silk stockings 

 in the i8th century, and which continued 

 to work till some forty or fifty years ago. 8 

 Silk was also thrown at Tewkesbury between 

 about 1840 and 1870, at which date the last 

 firm, Iliffe's, migrated to Coventry. But the 

 largest silk industry was in the Stroud Valley, 

 where it was practised at one time in ten or a 

 dozen mills. It has been killed off, however, by 

 the hostile tarifls imposed about fourteen years 

 ago by the French, who first drove the silk 

 manufacturers out of French markets and have 

 now undersold them in London. Such, at least, 

 is the explanation of one who has been forced to 

 close three silk mills, employing three or four 

 hundred hands. At least eight other silk mills 

 have followed suit, and an industry which forty 

 years ago employed nearly a thousand persons 

 is now almost extinct. The one exception 

 is a new business at Langford Mill, Kings- 

 wood, where some two hundred persons are 

 engaged in throwing silk for braid and fishing 

 lines. Cotton and flax are also spun for the 

 same purpose. 



6 Acti of P. C. (New Ser.), xxi, 204. 



']. J. Powell, Gloucestriana : 'Early Trade 

 Manuf. and Commerce of Glouc.' 



"P. C. Rushen, Hut. and Antij. of Chipping 

 Campden. 



190 



