Building a cob house in devon in 1461

Abstract

Manorial accounts for Sidbury, Devon, in 1461 provide almost the full costs for rebuilding a village house. It was thatched, with cob walls and jointed crucks, probably of three bays with one room floored over, and the accounts contain the earliest known written mention of cob. The assumption of responsibility by the manorial lords for building work in the village appears to be a response to a relatively short-lasting economic downturn in the mid fifteenth century.

KEYWORDS :

• medieval building accounts
• Devon
• cob walls
• jointed crucks

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In grateful memory, I thank Harold Fox for having identified the building account and shared the information with me. The present Cathedral Archivist, Ellie Jones, and her predecessor, Angela Doughty, have been extremely helpful in providing access and information. Professor C. Dyer and Mark Booth have advised on textual questions.

Notes

1 Slocombe, “The Roles of Lords, Landlords and Tenants”; Currie, “A Reply to Pamela Slocombe”; Dyer, “Rural Tenants and Their Buildings.”

2 Examples are cited in the references in note 1.

3 It was our intention to write it up together, a project prevented by his early death.

4 Most of this information is taken from Lysons, Devonshire, 443–5. The number of houses that were situated outside Sidbury itself has not been established.

5 Hoskins, Devon, 476–7; Vancouver, Agriculture of Devon, 53.

6 Cherry, Buildings of England: Devon, 20–1.

7 Exeter Cathedral Library, D&C 2961, undated but attributed to the episcopate of Bishop Lacy (1420–55).

8 Throughout the Sidbury documents, ‘lords’ is plural, referring to the Dean and Chapter as a body. Richard Wyse, referred to below, held two cottages for rents of 4s. and 2s.

9 Exeter Cathedral Library, D&C 5054 (1425–6); 5055–6 (1460–1; 1461–2); 5057–70 (1464–5 to 1495–6).

10 Alcock, “Medieval Cottages.”

11 Carrying either stone or heavy timber using packhorses would be difficult, and would hardly require the tracks to be repaired, so carts were probably being used, although they are not mentioned explicitly in the accounts.

12 Twistis (or Wistis) are hinge bands; see Salzman, Building in England, 296–7.

13 This precise term has not been identified elsewhere. Rudyng or radelyng is recorded meaning earth plaster in the fifteenth century (Salzman, Building in England, 189). Another possibility is ruddle, red ochre, but its use for colouring is not recorded in Devon at this period, and the cost and amount seem too large for this.

14 The thatcher (presumably) is here called stipulator, rather than cooperator, as in the previous account. Stipulator is translated as ‘worker with straw, thatcher wattle-maker’ (Dictionary of Medieval Latin, meaning 1), but the position in the account immediately following the purchase of the straw indicates that this item concerns thatching.

15 Salzman, Building in England, 147 cites a very similar phrase relating to New College, Oxford in 1453, when an upper floor was almost certainly being referred to. Was this where the Rude was used?

16 Salzman, Building in England, 217 cites a value of £36 in 1350 for the finished timber for 14 shops in London, which of course includes also the carpenter’s work; trees were sold for 1s.–2s. each in Warwickshire in 1549–50 (Alcock, Warwickshire Grazier, 178).

17 Exeter Cathedral Library, D&C 5059 (1468–9); 5063 (1474–5); 5065 (1476–7); 5068 (1495–6).

18 Exeter Cathedral Library, D&C 4821, mm. 1, 2 (1457); 4815, mm. 1, 2, 2v (1459–60); 4823, m. 1v (1462). In the last roll, Johanna Gresham and Edith Wayte were also presented for allowing their hall or house, respectively, to be ruinous.

19 Alcock, “Crucks: Dating, Documents and Origins,” 112.

20 The Farewyll and Wyse items were still included in the list of reductions but crossed out, probably because the lists had been copied from the previous year, before being updated.

21 Fox, “Tenant Farming,” 728.

22 Currie, “A Reply to Pamela Slocombe,” 39.

23 Fox, “Tenant Farming,” 730.

24 See references in note 1.

25 Dyer, “Documentary Evidence,” 107–8.

26 Alcock, “Medieval Cottages.”

27 Harold Fox, personal communication.

28 OED, Cob, n. 2, citing Carew, Survey of Cornwall, 52.