james campbell, ‘the carpentry trade in seventeenth

text © the authors 2002

James Campbell, ‘The carpentry trade in seventeenth-century England’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xII, 2002, pp. 215–237

T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X I I

Carpenters were key players in the seventeenth-century building world. John Summerson has

shown how they were involved in speculativedevelopment,David Yeomans has described indetail how the structures that they worked onchanged during the period and, more recently,Elizabeth McKellar has suggested that carpentersand other craftsmen were more commerciallysophisticated than has hitherto been supposed.

Yet several matters concerning the life of the buildingcraftsman have gone unexamined and recent studieshave made sweeping statements about the role of thecarpenter in this period that are not true. So areassessment and summary may be useful.

This article starts by looking at the definition ofcarpentry in the period, leading naturally to adiscussion of the guilds and their role, which is morecomplicated than is often suggested. The next sectionlooks at the role of apprenticeship in training. Toolsare then briefly discussed, followed by timber supply,pay and working hours, before finishing with aexamination of the idea of the carpenter’s firm in theperiod.

C A R P E N T R Y : A S E V E N T E E N T H -C E N T U R Y D E F I N I T I O N

It has been suggested that joiners frequently workedas carpenters or vice versa.5 This notion, that the twotrades were interchangeable, seems to deriveprimarily from R.Campbell’s The LondonTradesman, a mid-eighteenth century source,6 but

care should be exercised in using Campbell asevidence for seventeenth-century practice. TheLondon Tradesman was not a book on the buildingtrades; it was a manual aimed at helping parentsguide their children into suitable careers. As such, itcovered a broad spectrum of occupations, some ofwhich Campbell presumably knew better thanothers. Guild records show that there were disputesbetween the trades which are evidence of a wish tomaintain a division between carpentry and joinery,even where there were obvious areas of overlap.7

Moreover the most reliable sources of buildingpractice for the period are building accounts andcontracts, and they suggest that a rigid distinctionwas maintained between the two trades on site.

In rural areas it is true that a single village‘carpenter’ might be expected to act as a carpenter,joiner, wheelwright, and cooper,much as thenineteenth-century village carpenter Walter Rosedescribed. But in towns and cities in seventeenth-century England it seems to be likely that few joinersand carpenters practised both crafts at once.

Yet the areas of overlap were grey and the twotrades were frequently in dispute. In London aparticularly severe argument arose in , forcingrepresentatives of the two companies to meet to solvedifferences, and they continued to do so fairlyregularly for a number of years. In the talksfinally fell apart over the problem of shop-windows,and the Court of Alderman of the City set up aspecial committee to arbitrate. The resulting Courtproclamation of provides the clearestdescription of the two trades in the seventeenth

THE CARPENTRY TRADE IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

J A M E S W . P. C A M P B E L L 1

century. The following are the work of joiners:

. All bedsteads ‘except boarded Beadsteads andnayled togeather’

. All chairs, and stools, made with mortise ortenon joints

. All tables of wainscot, walnut, or other wood,glued with frames ‘mortesses or tennants’

. All forms, framed, made of boards with the sidespinned or glued.

. Chests framed, ‘dustalled [dovetailed], pinnedor glued’

. Cabinets or boxes dustalled, pinned, glued, orjoined

. Cupboards framed, dustalled, pinned or glued‘for wearing apparel Mercers SilkemenMillenors, or Napkinpressers’

. All sorts of wainscotting, ‘sealing’ of houses, and‘setling’ made by ‘the use of two Jages’

. Shop windows ‘made for ornament or beautywhich Cannot be made without glue’

. Doors framed, panelled or glued

. Hatches ‘Jaged, framed or glued

. Pews, pulpits, and seats with desks, framedpanelled or glued

. All sorts of frames upon stalls, framed or glued

. Picture frames, ‘latesses for Scrivenors, or thelike’

. All signboards of wainscot or carved

. All work made by one or two ‘Jages’ with the useof any kind of nails

. All carved works, using carving tools and notplanes

. All coffins of wainscot; but if of other wood, canbe made by either company.

And the following are the work of carpenters:

. All tables for drapers, taverns, victuallers,chandlers, countinghouses, all tables of deal,

elm, oak, beech, or other wood nailed togetherwithout glue, but not moveable tables [i.e.trestles]

. ‘Cesternstooles, washing stooles, buckingstooles’ and all other stools headed with oak,elm, beech, or deal and footed with square orround feet, except framed stools which are gluedor pinned.

. All sorts of frames made of elm, oak, beech, ordeal heads as long as the feet are not lathe-turned

. Laying of floors made of elm, oak (except‘grooved’ floors which are Joiners’ work). Dealfloors can be laid by either company

. ‘Deviding’ warehouses and rooms,unwainscoted and unpanelled, with split orwhole deals or other materials, except wainscot,and ‘except all particions grooved gluedbattened or framed’

. Shelving all rooms unwainscoted andunpanelled with seats and brackets, ‘exceptworke in studies which wee conceive fitt to beleft Indifferent to both Company’

. All signboards not made of wainscot or carved

. All pillars or ballasters for lights in a partition areto be made by whichever company made thepartition itself

. All galleries in churches and elsewhere unlesswainscot or panelled or carved

. Shelving in kitchens with racks

. Floors for pews in churches, if of oak or elm; ifof deal, then either company

. All frames for screens not made of wainscot,glued, carved or panelled

Also the ‘Jage’ to be used by the Carpenters only forthe work listed above.

The carpenters mostly worked on site andcontributed to the heavy work of building, while thejoiners worked on more delicate pieces in the safetyand cleanliness of a shop. Carpenters had an

T H E C A R P E N T R Y T R A D E I N S E V E N T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y E N G L A N D


important part to play in all aspects of building. Evenwhen the building was to be constructed in brick orstone, they were often the first tradesmen on site.They were responsible for scaffolding, shoring upexisting walls, and making battering rams to destroyold ones.When the site was cleared, it wascarpenters who provided walkways across the mudand shoring to the trenches for the foundations. Ifthe ground was unsound the carpenter would lay atimber raft beneath the building or drive timber pilesdown to firmer soil. Beyond that point the methodof construction varied according to the material.

For timber buildings the carpenter remained inabsolute control, the mode of construction beingmuch the same as it had been in the Middle Ages. Abrick foundation would be laid, on which the sillplates would be fitted.The whole frame wasconstructed before erection, each section being triedand measured against the adjacent pieces on theframing floor and marked with Roman numerals toidentify their location.The location of the framingfloor might be adjacent to, or in the middle of thesite, but this was not necessarily the case and a wilycarpenter might even frame his building outside thecity limits to avoid guild regulation.Once the framewas complete it had to be raised using ropes andprops. Although few carpenters were needed for theoften lengthy framing process, the raising of largestructures required considerable labour for arelatively short period. The floor joists and wall studswere often integral to the frames. After the raising, thefloors could then be boarded.

For stone or brick buildings the sequence ofworks was different, and it has not been clearlydescribed elsewhere. After clearance of the site andconstruction of the foundations, the carpenters’ firsttask was to provide scaffolding for the bricklayersand masons. They might provide it themselves (aswas the case at most of the City Churches), but morecommonly it was constructed for them by thecarpenter, who also produced and maintained theladders, trestles, barrows, and the troughs for mixing

the mortar.On larger jobs it was the carpenters’task to erect storage sheds and lodges for othercraftsmen.

For taller buildings cranes, gibbets,

capstans, and other lifting devices were required.

These could be quite elaborate, as the great ‘engines’at St Paul’s appear to have been. At St Paul’s it wasthe carpenters’ job to cover exposed masonry withshed roofs to keep off the rain. Elsewhere it sufficedto cover the top of the walls with boards or sacking toprevent water penetration over the winter monthswhen no bricklaying or masonry could be carried out.

Centering was one of the most important aspectsof carpenters’ work. All masonry vaults (whetherstone or brickwork), domes and arches requiredform-work during their construction. Centering wastime-consuming and expensive, requiring structuresas large as the roofs themselves, frequently at greatheights above the floor. At St Paul’s in April

forty-one men worked under Woodstock andLongland making centres and carrying out generalscaffolding works, whereas in December of theprevious year only seven men were required to frameand raise part of the roof of the choir. Althoughscaffolding and centering timber was softwood andpartly reusable, it represented the largest part of theoverall timber used on site. Few buildings in theseventeenth century used masonry vaults, butcentering was still required for curved arches inwindows and for flat arches. At present it isimpossible to reconstruct seventeenth-centurycentering from documentary sources, becausebuilding accounts provide only the barestdescriptions, and no surviving pictorial evidence hasbeen found.

During construction floor girders would havebeen put in as the work progressed, the ends builtinto the masonry unless the wall diminished inwidth, in which case the girder could rest upon a sillor plate on the resulting ledge. In most cases thejoists were probably put in at this stage, but the floorcovering would not have been nailed down to avoid it



getting damaged by weather and building work.Instead, where necessary, loose boards would be laidacross the joists to make a working platform.

When the walls had reached the appropriateheight, the carpenter could assemble the roof. Thiswas framed on a framing floor, numbered,dismantled, and lifted into position, piece by piece,to be re-assembled. The roof would immediately beboarded or battened so that the roof covering couldbe added. Once the roof was on, the floors could belaid, plastering and joinery could begin, and thewindows, doors, partitions and stairs installed. Thecarpenter played an important part in this work andprovided timber cornices both inside and out andsupporting frameworks known as ‘bracketting’ or‘bargetting’ for the plasterer.The laths, however,were the responsibility of the plasterer himselfbecause the strength of the plaster depended onthem.

C A R P E N T E R S ’ G U I L D S

It is tempting to account for the continuingseparation of crafts by the power of the trade guilds.Yet it is generally accepted that there was a steadydecline in guild power in this period. Guilds ofbuilding workers were in existence as early as thethirteenth century.They ostensibly played a majorpart in the control of their respective crafts andprovided an important welfare function in medievalurban society. In major cities like London, Norwich,and Bristol each building trade usually had its ownguild or company. In smaller towns there might be noguilds or several different trades might be gatheredinto a single company. Thus, for instance, Cambridgenever boasted a separate guild of carpenters, whileCanterbury had a joint guild of Carpenters, Joiners,Bowyers, Fletchers, Cappers, Glaziers, Pewterers,Plumbers, Painters, Bricklayers & Tilers. It isworth noting that the inclusion of a number of tradeswithin the same guild did not mean that distinctions

between these crafts were not preserved within theguild itself.

Building guilds probably did not have themonopoly or control that their records wouldsuggest. Most of these are ordinances and regulationswhich reflect the senior members’ desires rather thanactual practice. Many building craftsmen lived inrural areas outside the jurisdiction of the guilds, andeven in the cities, where guilds did manage toexercise a degree of control, ‘peculiars’ and suburbsstill lay outside their influence.

The situation was even more complicated inLondon. It has been shown that the number ofcarpenters enrolled in the Company onlyrepresented a small percentage of the carpenters whomight be expected to be operating within the City.

However, existing figures fail to take note of the so-called ‘custom of London’, in force throughout theseventeenth century, which allowed freemen of theCity to practise any trade, regardless of the one theyhad been apprenticed to.This curious exemptionhas two results: first, it makes it difficult to traceindividual tradesmen, and, secondly, a tradesman isoften recorded with two trades. It is easy to presume,for instance, that, because William Edge is describedas a Fletcher and a Bricklayer, he practised bothtrades; whereas it is likely that, although a member ofthe Fletchers’ Company, he only worked as abricklayer. The true meaning can only be surmisedfrom the context.

A number of the most prominent carpenters inseventeenth-century London were members of otherguilds. The most striking example is John Longland,who started his career as a haberdasher. He served anapprenticeship in this trade under Thomas Batesfrom February , gaining the freedom of theCompany on March .Thus up until theGreat Fire he does not seem to have had anyexperience of carpentry. Yet after the Fire he workedon many of the City churches, and was for yearsmaster carpenter at St Paul’s. He remained a memberof the Haberdasher’s Company throughout his



career, becoming a warden in , again in , andMaster in .We know of Longland’s case onlyby chance; in most cases guild records do not recordthe trade which the individual actually carried out. Inturn this makes quantification of practisingcarpenters very imprecise.

The building guilds survived not so much

because they ran a restrictive monopoly, but becausethey were beneficial to three groups in society: thecraftsmen, their clients, and the city administration.For the craftsmen the company provided a limitedform of welfare insurance, an opportunity to take partin the regulation of the city and the craft, and thebenefit of its legal protection. For the client the guild



City Guild Source of Information Abingdon Carpenters Berkshire County Record Office.

Berwick-upon-Tweed All Building Crafts Berwick upon Tweed Record Office

Bristol Carpenters† Bristol City Archives

Canterbury Carpenters, Joiners, Bowyers, Louw, ‘Demarcation Disputes’, cit., Fletchers, Cappers, Glaziers, Pewterers, Plumbers, Painters, Bricklayers & Tilers

Chester Wrights, Sawyers and Slaters Chester City Record Office

Coventry Carpenters, Tilers, Pinners Coventry City Record Office

Exeter Carpenters, Joiners, Masons, Painters, Glaziers Louw, ‘Demarcation Disputes,’ cit.,

Gateshead Carpenters, Joiners, Dyers, Fullers, Tyne and Wear Archives Blacksmiths, Locksmiths, Cutlers

Hull Carpenters Woodward, Men at Work, cit.,

King’s Lynn Carpenters, Joiners & Tilers Louw, ‘Demarcation Disputes,’ cit.,

Lincoln All Building Crafts Louw, ‘Demarcation Disputes,’ cit.,

London Carpenters Guildhall Record Office

Newcastle-upon-Tyne House Carpenters, Mill Wrights, Trunkmakers Tyne and Wear Archives

Norwich Carpenters Norwich City Archives

Oxford Carpenters, Masons & Slaters Louw, ‘Demarcation Disputes,’ cit.,

Salisbury Carpenters and Joiners (f./) Louw, ‘Demarcation Disputes,’ cit.,

Shrewsbury Carpenters, Bricklayers and Brickmakers Shropshire County Record Office

Stratford-upon-Avon Carpenters Stratford-upon-Avon Record Office

Worcester Joiners and Carpenters (f. ) Louw, ‘Demarcation Disputes,’ cit.,

York Carpenters, Joiners, Carvers, Wheelwrights, York City Archives and York Minster Sawyers Archives

Table . Carpenters’ Companies in the late seventeenth century.

† Hentie Louw lists the Bristol Company as a joint company of Joiners, Cofferers, Inlayers, and Carpenters [Louw, ‘DemarcationDisputes’, cit., ]. This is incorrect. Original ordinances for the separate carpenters’ company are preserved in the Bristol City Archives[MS. /, fols. –, –, –].

provided an assurance that transactions would becarried out honestly and that work would be of anacceptable standard. For the city, the guild provided away of controlling the building process and a supportto members and families who might otherwisebecome a burden on the city coffers. These principlesremained the dominant factors in influencing guildmembership in the seventeenth century.

The charitable work of carpentry guilds wasexercised in a number of ways. The guild undertookto look after members who fell on hard times.Thatwas rarely necessary unless a carpenter was injured,because most regulations dictated that members ofthe companies should be employed in preference toothers. If a craftsman died his widow had theoption of carrying on his trade as a full member ofthe guild or of collecting a pension. If he survivedto old age the carpenter might retire to a companyalmshouse.

Senior members of the guild were appointed assearchers. In this capacity they were responsiblefor examining buildings and goods, and dealing withcomplaints from patrons. When faulty workmanshipor short measure was encountered searchers couldfine defaulters and require them to make good.

The power of examination applied equally tostructures, timber for sale and furniture. Many guildordinances specified the frequency with whichperiodic random searches had to be carried out,

and the officers were empowered to enter anypremises they saw fit.The searchers themselveswere liable to be fined if they failed to carry out theirduties.The guild thus played a crucial role inbuilding regulation, particularly when there was littleby way of statute. Even at its best, however, suchregulation was difficult. New building in London, forinstance, was mainly in the suburbs, over which thecarpenters’ guild had no jurisdiction, giving thepotential for unlicensed craftsmen to proliferatebeyond its control.

The Great Fire of finally rendered theLondon Carpenters’ Company obsolete by removing

its monopoly.The rebuilding required all thelabour that was available.The Acts for Rebuilding,recognising this, allowed anybody to practisebuilding crafts within the City limits. Although itwas meant to be a temporary relaxation of the rules,the building guilds in London never recovered.

New building regulations replaced the guildregulations and were strictly enforced by a system ofCity Surveyors, making the Company’s searcherseffectively redundant.Men from differentoccupations acted as builders with a freedomunknown before. New houses could no longer betimber-framed, making carpentry a subservient trade.The resulting loss of power was never regained andthe Carpenters’ Company of London becameprogressively less important.

Outside London, craft guilds seem to haveretained power slightly longer, albeit with increasingdifficulty. Many rural towns still used predominantlytimber construction and guild regulations suggest acontinuation of monopoly well into the eighteenthcentury, but it is difficult from the survivingdocumentation to determine the exact degree ofcontrol exercised in any individual case.

E D U C AT I O N A N D T R A I N I N G

Although the guilds may have played a lesser role inregulating carpentry in the seventeenth century, thisprobably had little effect on the way carpenters weretrained. It seems likely that the typical carpenter inthe late seventeenth century learnt his trade byapprenticeship in much the same way as his medievalcounterpart. Unfortunately it was possible for theapprenticeship to be informal (ie. without writtenindenture) so this is impossible to prove.

Apprenticeship followed a recognised path.When a young man was apprenticed (carpenters andtheir apprentices were almost invariably male in theseventeenth century), he was bound to his masterby a contract known as an indenture for between



seven and eight years.The average age ofapprenticeship for carpenters in London was muchhigher than is generally assumed, most being boundbetween eighteen and twenty years old.No suchfigures are available for carpenters working outsidethe capital, but it was probably in much the samerange. The relatively high age of apprenticeshippresumably reflected the heavy nature of the work.

The contractual relationship between thecarpenter and his apprentice was strict. Thecarpenter undertook to feed, clothe, and train theapprentice in return for free labour.Theapprentice, for his part, was forbidden to marry,drink, gamble or attend alehouses, and was requiredto be in constant attendance on his master.

Although theoretically the master could beat anapprentice for even minor infringements andmisdemeanours, in practice eighteen to twenty-sixyear-old apprentices were notoriously difficult todiscipline, and reports of apprentices beingcontinually drunken and causing riots in citiesabound in the literature of the late seventeenthcentury.The training that the individual receivedwas equally questionable. Just as it was difficult todismiss an absent or unruly apprentice, so it was noteasy to prevent an insubordinate and incompetentstudent who had served his term from gaining hisfreedom, especially if a master might be glad to seethe back of him. In continental Europe, carpenterswere required to create a ‘masterpiece’ beforegraduating, but normally no such test was requiredto complete an apprenticeship in seventeenth-century England.

At the end of his apprenticeship the carpenterwas eligible to take his freedom. To do so he wouldhave to join a company, pay a one-off fee to the cityand then further regular amounts to the company inquestion (quarterage). In doing so, he became afree carpenter. Most guilds required their members tohave served a full apprenticeship within the city inquestion. In practice not all of the members of aguild, or freemen for that matter, would necessarily

have entered into any such agreement. A son of anexisting member of the guild was entitled to joinsimply by paying a fee (by patrimony) andfrequently anyone could join by making a sizeabledonation to the coffers (by redemption). Gentlemenor minor nobility might join by redemption, butthese methods was more commonly reserved forcarpenters who had trained outside the city and nowwished to work within it, or for others who simplyhad the wherewithal to jump the queue.

For poorer carpenters, entering by the traditionalroute, there was usually a gap of one or two yearsbetween completing apprenticeship and taking upfreedom, during which the newly qualified carpenterworked as a journeyman to earn enough to pay thefees.Many apprentices never went on to take theirfreedom, remaining journeymen for the rest of theirlives. Journeymen are the least understood group.Because they were not members of the guild,journeymen do not appear in guild records, and theyare rarely distinguished in building accounts.Thetitle ‘journeyman’ implies an element of travelling. Atour of the country was an important part of thetraining for continental carpenters and remains so tothis day, but there is no evidence to suggest that thiswas the case in England. Indeed English guildregulations were openly hostile towards theemployment of any worker in any capacity who hadnot been trained and registered locally. It was thusdifficult for carpenters in one area to learn techniquesused elsewhere.

London was an important exception to this rule.Guild records show that many rural carpenters in theseventeenth century chose to serve theirapprenticeships in the City. It is perhaps theseapprentices, returning to their place of origin afterserving their apprenticeships, who played animportant part in disseminating the techniques theyhad learned. London may thus have acted as animportant focal point in the development of Englishcarpentry in the period.

Journeymen could be men who had failed to



complete apprenticeships; men who had beenapprenticed elsewhere, but had not yet soughtfreedom in the City; or simply local carpenters whohad finished their apprenticeships, but had not takenup their freedom for other reasons. The first sort wasregulated against in most cities, but Woodward hasprovided evidence to suggest that they probablyrepresented a larger portion than the guilds wishedto admit.The second and third groups ofjourneymen tended to be tolerated, but wereencouraged to join the company, sometimes on proof of ability. In general journeymen worked for lower wages than free-carpenters, and werebanned from employing others or carrying outwork on their own account.Outside London theirmaster might have to provide an assurance ofcontinuing employment and might also have toprovide board and lodgings. It has been suggestedthat most journeymen did not go on to take theirfreedom.

In theory all seventeenth-century carpenterswould join the local carpenters’ company onbecoming free, and gradually become involved inregulating and administering their craft. If they did soin London, the next stage was to take livery. Thetime between gaining freedom and taking liveryvaried, the usual period being about a decade, butsome carpenters took much longer or never made thetransition at all. In a list of the Carpenters’ Companyof London in , the Company consisted of forty-nine freemen, thirty-six liverymen and twelve seniormembers on the Court of Assistants (including theMaster).The livery was the right to wear robes.With it went an increase in fees to the company and arise in commitment. Though it was expected that asuccessful carpenter would take an active part inrunning the guild, and would progress steadily up itsranks, in practice the busier carpenter often wishedto avoid this sort of distraction. Successful carpenterscould pay fines to postpone taking livery and otherhigher posts, and these fines were an importantsource of income for the company.

All the guilds were ruled by two or threewardens, sometimes known as searchers. The processof election varied. In some cities all the members ofthe guild had an equal vote, while in others only past-masters could vote. The wardens or searchers wereusually ranked into senior and junior or renterwarden. In London only a carpenter who had servedas a warden, in one or both posts, could be electedMaster of the Company. Having been Master or atleast a senior member, the London carpenter couldthen sit on the court of assistants, the rulingcommittee of the guild.

Being a senior member of a guild was aprerequisite to holding office in the town council. Ayoung and ambitious carpenter might theoreticallyascend a simple ladder to the summit of hisprofession and political power in the city. In practicethe carpenters’ guilds did not attract the sort ofwealthy and powerful men who tended to becomealdermen and mayors, and guild administrationtook up valuable time and money without offeringmuch in return. By the end of the seventeenthcentury many of the leading London carpentersworking under Wren had little or no connection withthe guild.

The method of training in carpentry was thus byno means as straightforward as it might at first seem.Although apprenticeship probably remained thenormal way to train as a carpenter, there were manyways to avoid apprenticeship and few real measuresto prevent any individuals who could wield the toolsfrom setting themselves up in the craft. Furthermore,there were few regulations to follow, and except inthe capital and a few large provincial towns, therewas little danger of being caught. On the other hand,outside apprenticeship there were few opportunitiesfor learning the trade. The literacy rate wassurprisingly high in the late seventeenth century andmany carpenters could read, but until thepublication of Joseph Moxon’s Mechanick Exercisesin , there were no books in English from whichto learn even the basic rudiments of the craft.



T O O L S

In some areas it was traditional for carpenters to givetools to their apprentices at the end of their training.W.L.Goodman carried out a study of toolsmentioned in apprenticeship indentures between and in Bristol, Norwich, Great Yarmouthand Southampton. From this study and the largenumber of tools surviving in museums and privatecollections, combined with the descriptionscontained within Joseph Moxon’s MechanickExercises, it is possible to form a reasonable pictureof the contents of the typical carpenters’ tool-chestand their various uses. Advances in technology canbe measured by comparing them with medievaltools, either surviving or reconstructed from pictorialor textual sources.

Moxon lists axe, pit-saw, whip-saw, hand-saw,tenant (tenon) saw, compass-saw, bow-saw (alsotermed frame-saw), chisel, augers, crow bar, single-handed mallet, commander (a woodensledgehammer), claw hammer, plumb-line, level, ten-foot rule, two-foot rule and square.The most basictool used by the seventeenth-century carpenter, andthe oldest, was the axe.Moxon distinguished thecarpenter’s axe, which was two-handed, from thejoiner’s hatchet, which was used in one hand.Healso related that carpenters used the axe standing onthe timber which they were cutting.The long-handled axe, swung with two hands, was a fairlyrough tool. The smaller hand-axe had been used inthe Middle Ages. It had an edge bevelled on onlyone side and was used as a smoothing tool. In manyareas it seems to have been used instead of the adze.

The adze had a long and distinguished history incarpentry, examples surviving from the BronzeAge. Used to smooth timber, the carpenter againstood astride his work and used both hands.Impressive effects could be obtained by the skilledcraftsmen and an adzed face can sometimes only bedetermined by looking obliquely along a piece ofwood while shining a light in the opposite direction.

Most timber used in carpentry in the late

seventeenth century was cut with the saw rather thanthe axe, and one of the most important distinguishingfeatures of carpentry of the period was that, havingbeen sawn, the timber was frequently planed ratherthan smoothed with the adze. The plane wasvirtually reinvented in the late seventeenth century,

but types of plane had been used in Roman times

and huge medieval planes are illustrated inmanuscripts and mentioned in building accounts.

The plane is often described as a joiner’s tool. It istrue that joiners had a greater variety of planes andused them in a larger number of ways, but the planedid play an important part in seventeenth-centurycarpentry. Its most important role was in fine finishedwork such as flooring and stairs, but the plane wasalso used on concealed carpentry; Sir ChristopherWren even specified planed timber in contracts forroofing.Timber was also smoothed using a draw-knife, but this delicate two-handed scraping knifewas unsuited to the building site and Moxon pointsout that it was mainly used for the manufacture of‘household-stuff ’.

The late seventeenth-century carpenter workedwith tools which were slightly improved upon thoseavailable to his medieval predecessor, mainly throughadvances in their manufacture. Some tools seem tohave gone out of use altogether, although they mayhave seen continued use in rural areas. Others, likethe adze, were in decline. But most of theseventeenth-century carpenter’s tools would berecognisable today, and all of them had a longerhistory. In producing buildings, tools were only halfthe story, however, and carpenters were dependenton the material on which they worked. In this areatoo changes were under way.

T I M B E R

Shortage of timber was a perennial problem for thegovernment of England throughout the seventeenthcentury. Timber was an indispensable raw material



for many things beside building, yet woodland hadbeen decimated by a combination of greed and badmanagement.The felling of timbers foragricultural clearance and for iron smelting had beengoing on for centuries, and to these the laterseventeenth century added the requirements of theNavy. Much of the timber in Royal Forests had beensold off for quick profit in the Civil War. A third-rateship of the line might require up to , trees (some acres of woodland) and seventeenth-centuryships needed continual repair and replacement. Thehistory of the Navy was thus inextricably bound upwith that of timber supply. By the late seventeenthcentury procuring adequate naval timber wasbecoming extremely difficult.Timber prices wererising accordingly, and the problem was exacerbatedby the destruction of the City’s buildings in the Fireof London.

Timber for building in rural areas was oftenavailable locally, but where this was not the case, andin cities, the carpenter, architect or building ownermight have to travel widely to secure adequatesupplies. Carpenters’ guilds sometimes traded intimber or exercised buying privileges in cities.

The Carpenters’ Company of London ran their owntimber yard and the accounts from the first half of theseventeenth century show that before the Civil Wartimber was available to members of the company oncredit.This was probably still the case after theRestoration, but no documents survive from thatperiod. Carpenters and landowners often sold timberwhen they had a surplus and large timbers might betransported hundreds of miles for use in particularlyprestigious buildings.The London carpentercould also acquire raw materials from independentcommercial timber merchants. Sir William Warrenwas one of the most prominent merchants of the age.He seems to have concentrated on supplying timberto the Navy and Pepys records in his Diary beingtaken around his extensive yards in Deptford.

Similar less prestigious merchants probably operatedelsewhere. No research has hitherto been carried out

on these important individuals. This may be due tothe absence of a timber merchant’s guild; theCompany of Woodmongers were suppliers of fuelrather than building materials. It is thus probablethat any regulation of the timber trade that existedcame through the Carpenters’ Company, but this isnot likely to have been great. Few of the Londontimber merchants seem to have been members of theCarpenters’ Company. Carpenters and architectswere left to strike bargains and examine timbermeasures as their means allowed; dishonesty andfraud were real concerns.

Oak was the timber of choice for buildingconstruction. English oak was particularlyvalued.Wren advocated its use in preference to allother timber in his report on Westminster Abbey,

The Act for Rebuilding London specified that allstructural timber for roofs, windows, lintels, andcellar floors must be oak, and a ready supply wasvital to shipbuilding. Pepys’s diaries reveal hispreoccupation with procuring oak for the Navy.

Officially the Navy was meant to have had the choiceof oak grown in Britain, and under an Act ofParliament crooked timber, especially valuable forship-building, was reserved for naval use in .

Purveyors were appointed to seek out and reserveoak and elm for government use. In practice theseordinances were ineffectual, and the navy had tocompete with the building industry in acquiring oakon the open market.Here it was at a disadvantage,being, like other crown departments, continually inarrears and unable to pay its debts until years afterpurchase. Building work was more flexible. Oakwas no less scarce, but private clients could pay cashand architects and carpenters were often prepared tosearch far and wide to procure the longest timbers.Still it was preferable to use timbers locallyproduced. Carriage of wood across land was difficult.Logs were transported on tugs, sets of cartwheelsattached to each end of the logs and pulled by oxenor horses.These were slow, costly, and easilybecame bogged down in mud in damp weather.



Timber could be transported much greater distancesby barge or ship.Oak from Nottinghamshire andYork was used at St Paul’s, and by the s anincreasing quantity of oak was being imported fromthe Baltic states. The patriotic bias in favour ofEnglish oak probably disguises the extent to whichcontinental oak was actually employed, but by

the Navy had accepted the use of Baltic oak inshipbuilding and it probably also had a morewidespread use in building than is generallyacknowledged.

Besides oak, carpenters used elm, chestnut,spruce, pine and fir. Other woods, such as larch, mayhave been employed in individual cases, but theywere less common. Elm had been used inmedieval carpentry. In the seventeenth century itseems mainly to have been used for stair treads andmore expensive floor boards, where its curving graincould better be appreciated. Evelyn also suggestedits use for ships, below the water-line, and for pipesand water-wheels because of its apparent resistanceto rot when immersed in water. Chestnut was alsoused in structural carpentry. Evelyn claimed that,next to oak, it was ‘one of the most sought after bythe Carpenter and Joyner’, and that it was widelyused in London.Wren, by contrast, was scathing,stating that

though we have also the best Oak Timber in theWorld, yet these senseless Artificiers in Westminster-hall and other Places, would work their Chestnutsfrom Normandy; that Timber is not natural toEngland, it works finely, but sooner decays thanOak.

There is nothing in the records to suggest thatchestnut was used in any great quantity in theseventeenth century for structural carpentry. It seemsto have been out of fashion. However, softwoodssuch as spruce, pine and fir were becomingincreasingly common. Most softwood was imported.Baltic deals had been used well before Evelyn wroteof pine and fir,

For the many and almost universal use of Trees bothsea and Land will Plea, —dant utile Lignum, NavigiisPinos—-They make our best Mast, Sheathing, &c.heretofore the whole Vessel. . .With Fir we likewisemake Wainscot, Floors, Laths, Boxes, and wherever weuse the Deal; nor does any Wood so well agree with theGlew as it, or so easie to be wrought: It is also excellentfor Beams, and other Timber-work in Houses, beingboth light, and exceeding strong, where it may be liedry everlasting, and an extraordinary saver of Oakwhere it may be had at reasonable price. I will notcomplain what an incredible mass of ordinary Moneyis yearly exported into the Northern Countrys for thissole commodity which might all be saved were weindustrious at home.

Timber as supplied by merchants was frequentlysawn. In London, to prevent short-measure, the sizesof sawn timber were regulated by the Carpenter’sCompany. A list of the acceptable sizes for all types ofsawn timber, and the measures in which they couldbe sold was included in their Company rules setdown in .

In seventeenth-century England, timber was stillsawn by hand using a pit-saw. Sawyers, thoughgenerally lowly paid, were highly skilled, leadingthem to push for their own guild in London in thelate seventeenth century; but this was blocked by theother building guilds, who relied heavily on theirlabour and low pay for their profits. Elsewhere inNorthern Europe saw-mills with water, wind or horsepower and multi-bladed reciprocating saws hadreplaced this primitive tradition.The boardsproduced by such mills were cheaper than hand-sawn timber, even allowing for transportation costs,and most sheet timber in this period was thereforeimported from the Baltic states.These fir ‘deales’came by ship to London, where they were unloadedby lighter and stored in the timber yards, whichwould normally be on or near the wharves along theThames.

Timber for ship-building and for internal uses inbuilding had to be seasoned, but structural oak wouldtypically be worked green.This is still the practice



in large-section timber-framing today. Seasonedhardwood is too hard to be worked easily, and thedrying out of the timber and the resulting shrinkagecan, in correctly designed joints, actually draw themembers together. Moreover it would have beenimpractical to set aside the timbers for the decade orso necessary to dry out the sections of twelve or moreinches which were commonly used in building in thisperiod. Inevitably unseasoned timber developedshakes and other defects, but the sizes of timbers weresuch that these flaws made little, if any, difference tothe structural performance of the various parts.

P A Y A N D W O R K I N G H O U R S

Carpenters, in common with other buildingcraftsmen in the late seventeenth century, wereusually paid by the day or half day. It was thereforeimportant that the meaning of the term was clearlyunderstood. The Statute of Artificers had set out theminimum working day in . Between mid-Marchand mid-September workmen had to be at their postsby a.m. and were to remain there until or p.m.They were allowed breaks totalling no more than twoto two and a half hours. In winter they were to workthe hours of daylight. A typical statutory working



Timber Measures

Name Size No. in a Load

Load solid feet (cu.ft)

Tonne solid feet (cu.ft) –

‘Baulk’ any length, square section: Varies (measured individually) "x " – " x "

‘rafter’ ' long, ⁄" x " at one end, " x "

at the other

‘joists’ ' " x " x ⁄"

‘pantions’ ' " x " x "

‘bedsides’ ' "x " x "

‘double quarters’ ' " x ⁄ ' x '

‘single quarters’ ' " x ⁄" x "

‘stable plancks’ ' " x " x "

‘quarter boards’ Width and length varies, thickness Sold by flat measure (in batches tapers from ⁄" to ." of hundred sq. ft)

‘seeling boards’ Width and length varies, thickness Sold by flat measure (in batches tapers from ⁄" to ⁄." of hundred sq. ft)

‘plancke boards’ Width and length varies, thickness " Sold by flat measure (in batches

of hundred sq. ft)

‘Lathes’ '–' x ⁄" x ⁄" Sold in bundles, lathes a bundle, bundles a load

Table . Timber measures in London, set out in the Ordinances of the Carpenters Company in

[Guildhall MS. , –].

day was thus between twelve and thirteen workinghours after breaks. Working hours may have relaxedslightly in the seventeenth century. In Bristolcarpenters were required to work from or a.m.until p.m. with time off for ‘breakfast’ and‘dinner’, while carpenters in York were required towork twelve hours, or forfeit s d for every hourlost. In Hull the day was even shorter, withworkmen being entitled to overtime in summer forworking outside the hours of a.m. to p.m. .

Theoretically workers in seventeenth-centuryEngland worked a six-day week, only Sunday being aday of rest. In practice the year was punctuated bynumerous public holidays. The myth that theReformation reduced the number of holidays by afifth and thus increased the effective working year hasbeen disproved, but it remains difficult todetermine the number of holidays in the lateseventeenth century. Some light can be thrown onthe subject by examining the accounts of St Paul’sCathedral, looking at three consecutive years , and . These show a remarkable consistencyin the maximum number of working days per month( to days) and suggest one or two days of holidayeach month, with September and May only averaging working days. However, some caution needs to beused in this interpretation: the difference may onlyindicate days lost through particularly badweather or sickness.

The effective working year was, in any case,reduced for carpenters and other building workmenby winter, when stone and bricklaying work couldnot be carried out. In general little work was done onsite from early December to the beginning ofMarch. In these periods carpenters presumablyworked indoors, making furniture and other items, orthey sought a living elsewhere.

Carpenters’ pay is more difficult to analyse. Asurvey of the daily wages of building craftsmen in thenorth of England has shown that they rose, butbarely kept pace with inflation. It seems likely thatthe same applied in London. Carpenters’ pay at St

Paul’s (s d) was comparable to wages in York in thesame period, which varied between s d ands d. It is important to remember that thesefigures are the amounts paid to overseers for the menunder their control. The workers did not necessarilyreceive more than a fraction of this.

E M P L O Y E R S A N D E M P L O Y E E S

Elizabeth McKellar has suggested that thecommercial practices of seventeenth-centurybuilding craftsmen were closer to those of modernbuilding contractors than had hitherto beenacknowledged.Her concern was primarily withmaster builders who employed representatives ofdifferent trades, but individual trades also acted asbusinesses. Unfortunately the nature of contractingin seventeenth-century building operations and thelack of surviving accounts of building organisationsthemselves make it extremely difficult to determinethe structure and nature of individual buildingfirms.

Wren left a well-known description of the variousforms of contracting at the time, dividing them intoBy Day, By Great and By Measure. All threesystems were used for carpentry. St Paul’s, forinstance, was carried out mostly by day rate, the CityChurches were mostly by measure, but St MichaelBassishaw was contracted by great. It was notuncommon to carry out works using a combinationof several methods. Day rates might be used forscaffolding and form-work, while roofs and floorsmight be specified by measure or by great. Bymeasure or by great implied the existence ofcarpentry firms, for it was up to the contractor to findand contract his own labour. Unfortunately these twomethods leave building accounts which tell us leastabout the numbers employed, as all payments weremade to a single person. Day rates leave accountswhich record the number and names of individualsemployed, but they do not necessarily reveal any



relationship between the individual craftsmen andtheir overseer, although presumably mastercarpenters would prefer to use men they knew.

The master carpenter in charge of any majorwork carried a considerable quantity of financial risk.The greatest and most obvious was that associatedwith contracting by great. Here the contractor had toestimate accurately the cost of a project before itsexecution. The complexity of the calculationsinvolved had led to a literature on measuring forcarpenters, beginning as early as withL.Digges’s A Boke Named Technicon, a calculating aidwritten specifically for ‘Carpenters, Joyners,Plaisterers, Upholders and the like’. Demand led toeighteen reprints over the coming century. Otherauthors were quick to follow. As well as providingmethods of calculating volumes and areas of timber,some of these books gave instruction in simplegeometry. Both Digges’s Boke and J.Darling’sCarpenters Rule Made Easy () were specificallyaimed at those who could not read easily andconsisted almost entirely of tables.

After the Restoration, books on measuringbecame increasingly complicated, but no lesscommon. The surge of titles after the Great Fire mayreflect a growth in the number of measurers,although they are probably too specialised forgeneral use by carpenters, who may well havecontinued to use the simpler Boke named Technicon,readily available throughout the period. Neverthelessthe sheer number of books clearly demonstrates theliteracy of seventeenth-century carpenters. Modernstudies have shown that the literacy rate in theseventeenth century was considerably higher thanmight be expected, even among the lower classes.

The master carpenter who managed a large numberof men and controlled large sums of money was likelyto be able both to read and calculate, and thus hadthe means to better himself. This is also suggested bythe large number of carpenters who could write theirown names, by surviving account books whichbelonged to carpenters, by receipts produced by

them, and by the complexity of the contractualagreements to which they put their signatures.

Despite the literature to help them there wereoccasions when carpenters found themselves in debtand begging their employers for more money oncompletion of the work. Even those who hadcalculated correctly, however, still carried enormousfinancial risks. For, whether paid by measure, bygreat or by day, the carpenter would have to rely onhis employer for settlement and might have to waitmonths or years. This was particularly the case withthe Crown which, unfortunately, was also one of thelargest employers.

The inability of the Restoration Crown to settleits debts caused serious problems for seventeenth-century craftsmen. James Groves, employed onHampton Court Palace, was still owed over £,

five years after the completion of work. Knoop andJones have noted that banks, which were beingformed in London at this time, did not lend tomasons and the situation was probably similar forcarpenters. It is unclear whether Groves paid hisworkmen in this instance or whether they had to waitfor the debt to be settled. At Hampton Court at leastmaterials were provided. Where a contract was bygreat the carpenter would have had to carry evenlarger sums as debt. If these were not passed on tothe supplier they would no doubt have fallen to theindividual. The carpenter employed on the RoyalWorks had either to find men willing to supplymaterials and labour on credit (presumably with thehope of receiving higher reward eventually), or hadto have the means to pay for such out of his ownpocket. If the latter were the case, it might explainwhy only a small number of men were involved at thehighest levels of the craft. Men like John Longland,Israel Knowles or Matthew Banckes had enough jobsto provide a flow of capital, while others, like JamesGroves, who was son of the Master Plasterer of theKing’s Works, may have been able to borrow fromfriends and relatives. Pepys recounts a number oflarge loans that he made to friends and colleagues on



which he could charge interest. This created a usefulsource of income. It is not unreasonable to imagine asimilar system operating between networks ofcraftsmen. This hypothesis is strengthened by thefact that there were strong family and master-apprentice relationships between many of the mostprominent master carpenters of the day. An exampleof this can be found in the relationships of MatthewBanckes, Master Carpenter in the King’s Works,summarised in Table . As this shows, James Groveswas not only the son of John Grove, the Master

Plasterer of the Kings Works, but was alsoapprenticed to Matthew Banckes (his uncle bymarriage), as was John James, who marriedBanckes’s niece. One of Banckes’s daughters marriedJohn Churchill, who took over from Banckes asMaster Carpenter of the Works and of WindsorCastle. Another married Charles Hopson, the joiner at Greenwich. Similar connections could nodoubt be traced elsewhere and provided a way ofspreading the risk and financial burden of individualprojects.



Matthew Banckes senior (c.–c.)Master of Carpenters’ Company –

John GroveMaster Plasterer ofOffice of Works

James Grove (c. –?)Master Carpenter at Hampton Courtand other Royal works. Master ofCarpenter’s Company

John Grove (c. –?)Master Carpenter in businesswith his father

Matthew Banckes (c.–c.)Master Carpenters in the Office of Works –Master of Carpenters’ Company

Matthew Banckes(c.–c.)Carpenter at Blenheim Palace

John James (c.–c.)Carpenter and Architect Asst. Clerk of Works at Greenwich,Master Carpenter at St Paul’s

John Churchill (–)Succeeded his father-in-law as MasterCarpenter of Office of Works. Freed byredemption

Not a carpenter

Father of

marries daughter of

his son

his sonapprenticed to

daughter Mary marries

his son

apprenticed to

apprenticed to

niece marries

apprenticed to

Table . Matthew Banckes and his circle.

The risks in carpentry contracting were great, butequally there were ample opportunities to make aprofit. If carpenters were able to carry the debtsinvolved in dealing with the Crown, it is likely, asColvin has proposed, that they also gained moresubstantially by doing so.When contracting bygreat the Office of Works was placed in a poorbargaining position and the contracts it made werelikely to be favourable to the contractor. The GreatFire had also created a huge quantity of work. Theprices for oak had risen sharply with an increaseddemand from the Navy and an increasing shortage oftimber.While potential builders complained ofprofiteering among London timber merchants,

carpenters no doubt added a profit to any timberthey purchased. For larger jobs it was not uncommonfor the carpenter also to contract to supply some ofthe materials from his own sources. Such sumscould be used to offset unfavourable rates by measure.

Another source of profit was open to theemployer-carpenter overseeing day-work. Whenworking by day each carpenter was theoretically paidindividually, but this probably was not the case inpractice. In Richard Jennings, Master Carpenterat St Paul’s, was charged with cheating his men byonly paying them a fraction of the amount hereceived for their labour. In his defence heanswered that this was the normal practice of the

time. Recent analysis of the accounts of theTownsend family, Oxford masons, has confirmed thisto be the case. For each s d paid to a carpenter,Jennings received between d and d each a day.

Taking into account the one hundred and fortycarpenters under his control, this amounted to atleast £ s a day: a sum of between £ and £,

a year.

Thus, despite all the apparent problems withcollecting payment, it seems likely that somecarpenters, at least, amassed considerable wealthfrom practising their craft. This is reflected in the factthat, contrary to the trend in the previous centuries,more carpenters’ sons began to follow their fathersinto the family trade.

The more successful master carpentercontractors of the late seventeenth century were thusfar from the rough mechanics caricatured in theliterature of the time. Those working on majorprojects were considerable businessmen, operatingin a complex network of business relationships.Their literacy, numeracy and wealth would have putthem on a level above the common artisan and closerto that of the gentleman architect. The frequentconversations between Hooke and master craftsmenwere not between social equals, but the differenceswere more educational than economic.



The substance of this article grew out of my Ph.D.Thesis, ‘Sir Christopher Wren, the Royal Societyand the Development of Carpentry’ (University ofCambridge, ) supervised by Professor AndrewSaint and Mr A.P. Baggs. Funding for the researchwas provided by the Worshipful Company ofCarpenters, the Drapers’ Company, the TallowChandlers’ Company, the RIBA, the Dyers’Company, the Worshipful Company of Architectsand Ashville College, Harrogate.

John Summerson, Georgian London,Harmondsworth, .

David Yeomans, The Trussed Roof, Aldershot, . Elizabeth McKellar, The birth of modern London,Manchester, , passim, but particularly chapters& .

Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary ofBritish Architects –, New Haven andLondon, , .

R.Campbell, The London Tradesman, London, ,–.

Hentie Louw, ‘Demarcation Disputes betweenEnglish Carpenters and Joiners from the Sixteenthto the Eighteenth century’, Construction History, V,, –.

Both building contracts and accounts survive inlarge numbers from this period. My conclusion ischiefly drawn from those included in the collectedvolumes of the Wren Society, Oxford, –,Volumes I–XX (hereafter WS); the survivingcontracts and accounts for the King’s Works in thePublic Record Office at Kew (hereafter PRO); thosefor the City Churches in the Guildhall Library inLondon (hereafter Guildhall); the accounts of thebuilding of the Wren Library at Trinity College,Cambridge, and the Wren Chapel at EmmanuelCollege, Cambridge, held in the respective collegearchives; and the documents reprinted in R.T.Gunther, The Architecture of Roger Pratt, Oxford,.

William Clift and his son worked as sawyers,carpenters and joiners in rural Dorset [James Ayres,Building the Georgian City, New Haven andLondon, , chapter , n. ].

Walter Rose, The Village Carpenter, Cambridge,.

Hentie Louw, op. cit.; similar disputes in Hull,

Chester, Newcastle and York are cited in DonaldWoodward, Men at Work: Labourers and BuildingCraftsmen in the Towns of Northern England,–, Cambridge, , –.

Details in B.W.E.Alford and T.C.Barker, A History ofthe Carpenters’ Company, London, (hereafterAlford and Barker), –; Edward Basil Jupp, AnHistorical Account of the Worshipful Company ofCarpenters of the City of London, London, ,–& –; Hentie Louw, op.cit..

It has been suggested that “a ‘Jage’ was probablysome kind of metal device for strengthening joints”[Alford and Barker, op. cit., ]. The word is not inthe Oxford English Dictionary, but it does list‘jagged’ as a nineteenth-century American word fordovetailing. As the above passage already mentionsdovetailing it is clear that this was not the intentionhere. A.P.Baggs has drawn my attention to thePenguin Dictionary of Slang which lists a Jague as aditch, suggesting it may have meant a groove. Inother words joiners did panelling held in grooves.

Alford and Barker, op.cit., –, quoting from theRepertory of the Court of Aldermen of the City ofLondon, , fols. –b, b.

For instance, at St Paul’s the carpenters wereresponsible for demolition of houses adjacent to thecathedral prior to the commencement of work[Guildhall, MS. , XVI, , , , , & ,September – January /]. These werepresumably timber, but the carpenters were alsoinvolved in demolishing a dangerous part of the oldchoir in September–December [Guildhall, MS. , XVI, ].

At St Paul’s, John Longland and four men were paidfor walkways between October and June [Guildhall, MS. , XVI (b), ] and ‘Shoreingthe Banks of the Foundations on the N.E. Side andEnd of the Quire’ in August [Guildhall, MS. , XVI (b), ].

In the contract for the foundations of St Olave Jewryit is stated that ‘Mr Banckes Carpenter to lay afoundation of timber six inche square in hart of oakeand for the Steple of St Olave Jewry about eight footlong. In manner foll. (viz) nine peeces to be laid oneway and after the Spaces are well Ramed to a Levell,to lay nine peeces at equal distances, Cross, and upon the first’ [Guildhall MS. , I, ]. John



N O T E S

Longland was contracted to drive iron-tippedtimber piles for the foundations of the tower of StLawrence Jewry on October [Guildhall, MS. , I, ].

The brick sill may have sometimes been added afterthe erection of the building by propping it up untilcompletion [Richard Harris, Discovering Timber-Framed Buildings, Risborough, , –].

The methods of erecting and marking buildingshave been studied extensively by the Weald andDownland Museum. The results of these studies aresummarised in Harris, op.cit. (marking of timbers isdiscussed on page ), and in the journal Morticeand Tenon, nos. –.

In Norwich the Guild actually passed a bylaw toprevent precisely this: ‘- if a house is framedoutside the city but to be set up inside thecarpenters to pay for it to be searched s for a houseof length ’ or under and s thereover’ [Norwich,Norfolk Record Office, Rye MS. , , ‘Rules &Byelaws of the Carpenters’ Company of Norwich–’].

For scaffolding see Banckes’s estimate for the worksat Winchester Palace [WS, VII, –]. For ladders:St Paul’s May ‘Carpenters [. . .] Make NewLadders’ [WS, XIV, ]. Longland employed JoHawtin, a wheelwright, to help fix the barrows.

Eg. at Trinity College Library, Cambridge, ThomasSilk, carpenter, was paid for erecting a building forthe masons: ‘For & a halfe deals for ye MasonsLodge – £––’ [Trinity College, MS. .., ].At St Paul’s there were many occasions of shedsbeing erected. For example John Longland was paidfor erecting sheds for the masons in July [Guildhall, MS. , XVI (b), ].

The most common type was a simple A-frametermed ‘Sheares’. These were employed extensivelyat St Paul’s eg. September ‘Carpenters [. . .]making moving Sheeres for the Mason’s Work,helping to remove them from one place to another asthe Masons had occasion to crane the Stones to theWork’ [Guildhall, MS. , XVII, ].

Simple lifting device with only a pivoting horizontalarm. Records for St Paul’s between April and June show ‘Carpenters [. . .] Makeing and Setting upa Gibet to sett the Window’ [Guildhall, MS. ,XXIV, ].

Winches usually used in conjunction with ‘sheares’as at St Paul’s August ‘Carpenters [. . .] In

making & setting up Sheeres, making Capsterns andCapstern Houses’ [Guildhall, MS. , XVII, ].

Elaborate lifting devices from the late seventeenthcentury are shown in André Felibien, Des Principesde l’Architecture, Paris, , plates XX–XXII, butnot in Moxon. A discussion of the mediaevalequivalents can be found in John Fitchen, BuildingConstruction Before Mechanization, Cambridge,Mass., , –.

Feb / ‘Carpenters. . .framing an Engine to hoistup Rubble & Morter & fixing same Engine on topof the same leg [S.W. leg of dome]. . . fixing suchanother Engine on the inside of the N.E. leg of theDome’ [Guildhall, MS. , XXIX, ].

Guildhall, St Paul’s Cathedral Building Accounts,MS. , XXXIV, .

The reconstructions in John Fitchen, BuildingBefore Mechanization, Cambridge, Mass., ,–; and John Fitchen, The Construction ofGothic Cathedrals, London, , ch., althoughuseful and interesting, are hypothetical andspeculative.

WS, X, & . L.F. Salzman, Building in England down to ,Oxford, , .

Louw, op. cit., . Alford and Barker, op. cit., –. Idem. Robert Ashton, The City and the Court –,

Cambridge, , – and –. Strictly speakingafter the custom of London applied only to‘marchandizing and trades’ not crafts, but thenumber of examples of senior carpenters beingmembers of other guilds in the second half of thecentury suggests that in carpentry at least this rulingwas not enforced.

Guildhall, MS. /, Records of theHaberdasher’s Company, fol. .

Ibid., MS. /, Records of the Haberdasher’sCompany.

Ibid., MS. , Records of the Haberdasher’sCompany.

The by-laws of the London Carpenters’ Companystate that a brother who had fallen on hard timesmust not be allowed to ‘suffer or perish’ and must behelped from the ‘poor box’ [Guildhall, MS. ,Byelaws of the Carpenters’ Company, –]. In Yorkall brethren who had fallen upon hard times wereentitled to d a week [York, York Minster Archives



(hereafter YMA), MS. QQ//, Ordinances of theCarpenters’ Company of York, fol. r].

Alford and Barker, op.cit., : ‘It is ordained that ifany of the said Brotherhood have need to aworkman at any time & another of his Brethren isout of Work & have no work to do, that the saidbrother that has need of a workman shall rather takeinto work his brother [. . .] than any other that is nota Brother’ [YMA, MS. QQ//, fol. r].

In Bristol [Bristol, Bristol City Archives (hereafterBCA), MS. /, City Ordinances –,article , fols. –].

On the role of widows see Donald Woodward, Menat Work, Cambridge, , –, and RichardHewlings, ‘Women in the Building Trades’,Georgian Group Journal, X, , .

These were relatively rare. Two fifteenth-centuryalmshouses built for the company in London wererented out after a relatively short period [Alford andBarker, op. cit., ].

The method of election varied between companies.In York the previous year’s searchers suggestedeight names and the members then communicatedtheir preference to the two youngest and two eldestmembers of the company [YMA, MS. QQ//,Ordinances of the Carpenters’ Guild, article ,fol. r].

The fine for defective work was £ in Norwich[Norwich, Norfolk Record Office (hereafter NRO),Rye MS. , Laws of the Carpenters’ Company, ,article , fols. –] and s d in York [YMA, MS.QQ//, Ordinances of the Carpenters’ Guild,article , fol. v].

For instance, this was the case in Bristol [BCA,MS. /, Carpenters Company Ordinances, fol.].

Normally quarterly, as was the case in Norwich[NRO, Rye MS. , Laws of the Carpenters’Company, , article , fols. –], which allowedthe searchers to collect quarterage at the same time.

The fine for failing to allow entry of a searcher inNorwich was s [NRO, Rye MS. , Laws of theCarpenters’ Company, , article –, fols. –].

For example, in York searchers were liable to a fineof £ for failing to carry out their duties [YMA,MS. QQ//, Ordinances of the Carpenters’Guild, article , fol. v]. The equivalent fine inNorwich was s [NRO, Rye MS. , Laws of theCarpenters’ Company, , article , fols. –].

T.F.Reddaway, The Rebuilding of the London afterthe Great Fire, London, , .

Ibid., –. Statutes of the Realm, V, , ° & ° Car II c.,

Article XVI. Jupp, op.cit., –. The Company complained

about a drop in number of admissions to the Mayorin a petition in : ‘the number of Personsformerly made Free of the Petitioners Company, andwhat are lately Admitted: a true Account whereof isas followeth: In the year . .; In the year. .; In the Year . . . (it being thesickness year); In the year . ., In the year. . .; In the year . .; In the year. . .; In the year . . ..’ [Jupp, op. cit.,].

Reddaway, op. cit., –. Alford and Barker, op. cit., –. Guild regulations continued to be made in the

eighteenth century and survive in the archives inNorwich, York, and Bristol.

On the problems of tracing apprenticeship see JoanLane, Apprenticeship in England –,London, , passim.

‘Only boys were apprenticed to building craftsmenin Northern towns,’ [Woodward, op. cit., ]. InLondon there is only one recorded instance of awoman being admitted as an apprentice, that ofRebecca Gyles in who was bound to a widowand later asked to be made free by the Company[Jupp, op. cit., ]. The Company, interestingly,could see no reason for refusal. The case appears tohave been exceptional. Widows, however, wereusually entitled to continue their husbands’businesses unhindered and occasionally appear inCompany books in this capacity [Woodward,op. cit., –].

G.J.Eltringham, ‘Notes on Apprenticeship in theCarpenters’ Company of London in the th andth Centuries’, unpublished essay [Guildhall, datedNov. , ]; Jupp, op. cit., .

Eltringham, op. cit., . Lane, op. cit., passim; Woodward, op. cit., –. In London the bylaws of the Carpenters’ Company

relate how these rules were being generally abusedand how the master had to ensure that allapprentices went to church [Guildhall MS. ,–, –].

Eg. The Diary of Samuel Pepys edited and



transcribed by Robert Latham and Robert Matthews,London, , (hereafter Pepys, Diary), I, , ; V,–, –; IX, –, , , .

The practice is long established in France. For anexplanation of the modern practice see CameronScott, ‘Learning the Ropes’, Mortice and Tenon, II,, –. For the general history see AntoineMoles, Histoire des Charpentiers, Paris, ,passim.

The exception was in York, an act requiring a‘humbling piece’ being passed in [YMA, MS.QQ//, Ordinances of the Carpenters’ Guild,article , fol. ].

Quarterage in London was s d for carpenterswithout an apprentice, s for those with one[Guildhall MS. , –]; in Bristol it was only d[BCA, MS. /, fol. ); d in Norwich [NRO,Rye MS. , fols. –].

In London there was a stipulation that even thosejoining by patrimony had to be bound and submit toa test of competence [Guildhall MS. , –].This was not the usual practice elsewhere.

In Bristol this practice was expressly forbidden andall those who completed their apprenticeship had tojoin the Company within one month [BCA, MS./, ].

As such they fail to appear on any of the Cityregisters.

On problems of analysing the position ofjourneymen see Woodward, op. cit., –.

Cameron Scott, op. cit., passim. Forty-three per cent of apprentices enrolled in

were from outside the capital [Eltringham,op. cit., –].

Ibid., . Woodward, op. cit., , –. Unfranchised men were generally treated the same

as men from outside the city (foreigners). In Londonthe regulations ruled against employing foreigners[Guildhall, MS. , –]. In Norwich noperson could work without the permission of theHeadman and Wardens [NRO, Rye MS. , article, fols. –]; similarly, in Bristol foreigners couldonly work with permission of the Master andWardens of the Company [BCA, MS. /,articles –, fol. ] and in York no unfranchisedman or foreigner could be employed withoutpermission of the searchers [YMR, MS. QQ//,article , fol. v].

In Bristol, no master workman was to be paid aboves a day, no journeyman or ‘eldest apprentice’ aboved a day, and all other apprentices were limited tod a day [BCA, MS. /, Ordinances of theCarpenters’ Company, fol. ].

Norwich [NRO, Rye MS. , article , fols. –]. The relevant articles in the by-laws of carpenters’

guilds in the various cities are as follows: London[Guildhall, MS. , –]; York [YMR, MS.QQ//, article , fol. v]; Norwich [NRO, RyeMS. , article , fols. –]; Bristol [BCA, MS./, article , fol. ].

Woodward, op. cit., . Guildhall, MS. /, Warden’s Accounts, entry

dated June . In London the fine was five marks [Guildhall, MS.

, –]. Norwich had a large number of officers, consisting

of two wardens, six searchers, and a ‘Headman’.Selection was by committee. The assembledCompany elected a committee of four who selectedeight more. This committee of twelve thenappointed the Wardens and Headman [WilliamHudson and John C. Tingey (eds.), The Records ofthe City of Norwich, II, Norwich, , ]. InBristol the arrangement was that the existing Masternominated a candidate, and another was putforward by the Company, the new Master beingdecided by an open ballot by the whole assembly. Asimilar system operated for the Wardens, with thenewly elected Master putting forward one candidatefor ‘First Warden’ and the Company the other. TheFirst Warden then nominated a candidate for secondWarden [BCA, MS. /, articles and , fols.–]. The Company in York seems to have beenruled by a committee of four ‘searchers’. Theexisting searchers nominated eight candidates fromwhom four were selected by secret ballot [YMA,MS, QQ//, fol. ]. In London a court of thepast masters and wardens met on the secondMonday in August each year to decide the masterand three wardens for the following year [GuildhallMS. , –].

For instance, in London Jupp can only list the caseof Sir John Cass, Kt. and Alderman, a Liveryman ofthe Company who was chosen as a Sheriff in ,and in consequence made Master in the same year[Jupp, op.cit.,]. In Norwich the most prominentcarpenter of the period was Palfreyman Sheffield



(c?–), who was made a common councillor[John Pound, Tudor and Stuart Norwich,Chichester, , ]. Sheffield gained his freedomby apprenticeship in [Percy Millican, TheRegister of the Freemen of Norwich –,Norwich, , ] and on his death left behindgoods and chattels worth £ [Inventory: PRO,PROB. /, quoted in Pound, op.cit., ].

Analysis of the carpenters listed in the Wren Societycompared with the lists on microfilm at theGuildhall [Guildhall, MF. /–] shows that lessthan % were members of the guild.

David Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order: readingand writing in Tudor and Stuart England,Cambridge, , passim.

W.L.Goodman, ‘Woodworking Apprentices andtheir Tools in Bristol, Norwich, Great Yarmouth andSouthampton –,’ Industrial Archaeology,IX, , no., November, –.

Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises, London, . He marks the hand-saw and the tenon saw out,

along with the delicate knife-like compass saw, asbeing joiner’s tools, but apprentice indentures showthat they were used by carpenters and joiners alike[Goodman, Woodworking Apprentices, op. cit.,–].

The carpenters’ chisel was struck with a mallet ratherthan being guided by the hand [Moxon, op. cit.,].

Ibid., , –, –, –& plate . Axes and adzes date back to the bronze age

[W.L.Goodman, The History of Woodworking Tools,London, , –]. Discussion of the types of axein use from the middle ages onwards see Goodman,Woodworking Tools, cit., –; Henry C. Mercer,Ancient Carpenters Tools, Doylestown,Pennsylvania, , –.

Moxon, op.cit., –; the hatchet is discussed inMercer, –.

Moxon, op.cit., . Salzman reprints fifteenth-century illustrations

showing carpenters using short handled axes withtwo hands and it may be that carpenters’ axes,although used two-handed, had considerablyshorter handles than felling axes, forming anintermediate stage between the felling axe and thehatchet [Salzman, op. cit., plates and ].

Goodman, Woodworking Apprentices, cit., . Goodman, Woodworking Tools, cit., –; Mercer,

op. cit., –; Salzman, op. cit., .

Changes in plane design are discussed in detail inGoodman, Woodworking Tools, cit., –, –;see also Mercer, op. cit., –; for descriptions ofthe use of planes and their form in the seventeenthcentury see Moxon, op. cit., –& plate .

Mercer, op. cit., –. Salzman, op. cit., and plate .

Idem; Moxon, op. cit., –. Eg. Guildhall, MS. , I, , Contract for the

Carpentry of St Christopher, Threadneedle Street,dated July .

Moxon, op. cit., and plate . The twybill [Philip Walker, Woodworking Tools,

Princes Risborough, , , ; Mercer, op. cit.,–, ; Goodman, op. cit., –] may havedisappeared from use in England in this period. It ismentioned in Bristol indentures [Goodman,Woodworking Apprentices, cit., ] but notelsewhere.

Robert Greenhalgh Albion, Forests and Sea Power:the Timber Problem of the Royal Navy –,Cambridge, Mass., , passim.

Guy de la Bedoyere (ed.), The Writings of JohnEvelyn,Woodbridge, , .

Albion, op. cit., passim., but particularly –. Timber at the end of the seventeenth century was

twice the cost of timber a century before [JamesT.Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices inEngland, Oxford, , V, ].

For instance, in Bristol carpenters could buy timberavailable in the town at cost and with priority overother purchasers [BCA, MS. /, article , fol.], while in Norwich only carpenters could buyboards [NRO, MS. Rye , fols. –].

See Guildhall, MSS. , , & . Oak for St Paul’s was transported by sea from York

at a cost of £ s d and by land and sea fromWelbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire at a cost of £s d [WS, XV, –].

His yard’s location in Deptford implies this and Ihave not found any records of Warren beinginvolved in supplying timber for buildings.

Warren’s yards burnt down and he died a poor man[Bryan Latham, Timber: Its Development andDistribution, London, , ].

A ‘Company of Merchant Carpenters’ is listed in theaccounts of St Paul’s from – [WS, XV,passim]. Whether this was a business organization, arecognized guild, or another name for the timber



merchants operated by the Carpenters’ Company isunclear.

Hylton Burleigh Dale, The Fellowship ofWoodmongers, London, , repr. from the ‘CoalMerchant and Shipper’.

Wren advocates its use for roofs ‘because it will bearsome Negligence’ [Letter to a Friend on theCommission for the Building of Fifty newChurches, C.Wren, Parentalia or Memoirs of theFamily Wren, , facsimile edn., Farnborough,, ; Lydia Soo, Wren’s Tracts on Architectureand Other Writings, Cambridge, , ; WS, IX,; Writings of John Evelyn, –].

‘…our English Oak is infinitely preferable to theFrench, which is nothing so useful, nor comparablyso strong’ [Writings of John Evelyn, ].

Lydia Soo, op. cit., ; Parentalia, ; WS, XI, .Continental oak was not considered suitable forshipbuilding until [Albion, op. cit., –].

& Car II, c. , . Albion, op. cit., –. Pepys, Diary, XI, –. Albion, op. cit., . On the uselessness of the Purveyor William Cooper

in Pepys’ time see Diary, III, ; IV, . Howard Colvin (ed.), The History of the Kings

Works, London, , V, –. Eg. in the transport of the Duke of Newcastle’s

timber for St Paul’s ‘Carriage of ye said Treesrequiring a double Teame of Cattle days at s aday’ [WS, XV, ].

Hence the relative ease with which John Etty couldsend oak from York to St Pauls [WS, XV, ]compared to the enormous problems inherent intransporting timber from the Duke of Newcastle’sestate at Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire [WS,XV, ].

Albion, op. cit., , . Cecil Hewett has suggested that the roof of Wells

Cathedral may have been of larch (or pine) and that itdated from [Cecil Hewett, English Cathedraland Monastic Carpentry, Chichester, , ].

Salzman, op. cit., , cites it as having been used formaking piles for foundations in the fourteenthcentury. Various medieval timber buildings in theWeald and Downland Museum, Singleton, Sussex,employ elm posts.

References in accounts of the Office of the King’sWorks for the late seventeenth century show the use

of elm in this capacity, for example at Kensington[WS, VII, ].

Writings of John Evelyn, . Ibid., . Wren’s report on Westminster Abbey [WS, XI, ;

Lydia Soo, op. cit., ]. The first recorded use of spruce is in

[T.Rogers, op.cit., ]. Writings of John Evelyn, . Jupp, op.cit., , , , . The sawyers resisted the use of mechanical saws

which do not seem to have been adopted until theeighteenth century [B.Latham, Timber: itsDevelopment and Distribution, London, , ;Pepys on sawmills, see Diary, III, ]. A sawmilldating from before survives in West WycombePark [Jonathan Marsden, ‘William Penn and SirFrancis Dashwood’s Sawmill’, Georgian GroupJournal, VIII, , –].

The price of deals remained constant throughoutthe seventeenth century, despite other rises in costs[Rogers, op.cit., V, ].

Alec Clifton Taylor, The Pattern of EnglishBuilding, London, , .

Henry VIII, c..; Elizabeth I, c.. BCA, MS. /, fol. . YCA, MS. B, fol. v; Woodward, op.cit., ,

suggests that this included meal breaks. Woodward, op. cit., . Ibid., –. Idem. Working days are not listed in the Wren Society.

This article uses the Audited Accounts [Guildhall,MS. ].

This would seem unlikely. Much of the site wascovered and even in extremely bad weather somecarpenters would still have been able to work.Moreover the months with longest ‘holidays’, Mayand September, are those when one would expectthe best weather.

For the case of St Paul’s see Guildhall, MS. ,passim.

Woodward, op. cit., –. Ibid., . Howard Colvin, ‘The Townsends of Oxford: a firm

of Georgian Master-Masons and its Accounts’,Georgian Group Journal, X, 2000, –, –.

McKellar, op. cit., passim, but particularly chapters& .



The best account of such an early eighteenth-century firm and its practices can be found inColvin, ‘The Townsends of Oxford’ cited above.

Wren, letter to the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford,over the building of Tom Tower, June [WS,V, ].

For a general overview of the literature see David T.Yeomans, ‘Early Carpenters’ Manuals –’,Construction History, II, , –, and EileenHarris, British Architectural Books and Writers–, Cambridge, , –.

David Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order: readingand writing in Tudor and Stuart England,Cambridge, , passim.

For instance, William Byrd was forced to beg hisemployer, New College, Oxford, for money after heunderestimated the cost of building of their newGarden Quadrangle in – [The Victoria Historyof the Counties of England, Oxford, III, , ].

The problems are discussed in full in Colvin et al.,King’s Works, cit., V, –.

For a discussion of the problem for masons see D.Knoop & G.P. Jones, The London Mason in theSeventeenth Century, Manchester, , –.

He was paid £ towards his debt on July [London, PRO, WORKS /].

Knoop & Jones, op.cit., –. Guildhall, MF. . Sally Jeffery, ‘English Baroque Architecture: the

Work of John James’, unpublished doctoral thesis,University of London, , .

Colvin, King’s Works, cit., V, . Rogers, cit., V, , . Stephen Porter, The Great Fire of London, Stroud,

, –. John Longland supplied considerable quantities of

timber for St Paul’s [WS, XV, xli–xlv]. WS, XVI, . Idem. Colvin, ‘The Townsends of Oxford’, cit., . WS, XVI, . Assuming carpenters a day working on average

fifteen days a month, twelve months a year, calculatedseparately for d and d a carpenter. In practice thefigure would probably be closer to £ than£,, but nonetheless the figures are considerableand the reasons for jealousy and complaint are clear.

Eltringham, op. cit., . H.Robinson and W.Adams (eds.), The Diary of

Robert Hooke –, London, , passim.



james campbell, ‘the carpentry trade in seventeenth

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