medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Christopher Crockett wrote:
> From: John Briggs
>
> no question about it, water was preferred.
>
> in the case of Bercheres stone, carting it the km or so to the river at
> Morancez and loading it onto barges, floating it downstream to the City,
> and offloading it for use at sites *down in the valley* was certainly a
> possibility (at least so it appears, from my comfortable armchair
> view).
>
> but hauling it up the hill, through the town, to the cathedral seems to be
> enough of a task to obviate the laborsaving achieved by using the water
> route.
What is the distance? A shortish distance uphill is something that you can
throw labour at - and still be cheaper than a longer distance overland. The
final carving could have been done at the bottom of the hill and the
finished stone transported up the hill.
>> As late as the eighteenth century, the British Admiralty gave
>> instructions that timber was not to be cut further than 10 miles from a
>> navigable waterway. There are alleged to be still "Admiralty
>> Plantations" in Sussex that were bought up at a time of panic over timber
>> shortage - but it was found cheaper to transport it from the Baltic or
>> North America.
>
> yes, just as the U.S. regime is discovering as we speak, it takes an
> Empire to support a decent Navy.
Maybe - but the point I was making was that land transport of more than 10
miles was more expensive than a transatlantic crossing.
John Briggs
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