Although I decided, some years ago, that life was too short to really get to
grips with historical weights and volumetric measures, I have always found
the following to be very useful, even if only to reinforce my decision.
'Report from the Select Committee on Weights and Measures' (House of
Commons, 1 July 1814). [especially Appendix A.]
For what it is worth, this report notes that:
'Weigh, or Wey, of cheese, flax, lead, tallow, and wool, 14 stone, 31 Ed. 1
properly, 5 chaldrons, or 40 bushels.
of cheese, 2 cwt.; but in Essex, 256 lb. 9 H. 6. Otherwise 416, and in
Suffolk, 3 cwt. ...
of salt, 1 ton=40 bushels, of 84 lb. each. 27 G. 3. ...
S. Wales: of coals, 6 chaldron=8 tons 2 cwt.
Swansea: of refuse coals, about 9 and a half tons. of culm, 10 tons, or 216
heaped bushels.'
>Coal was not used routinely in England for making salt before the C17
Surely that cannot be entirely true. There is evidence for the use of coal
fuel in saltmaking in NE England in the fourteenth century:
'And as the Tyde comes in yt bringeth a small wash sea-cole which is
employed in the makynge of salte.'
And more strong evidence from the fifteenth century.
Stafford M Linsley
Lecturer in Industrial Archaeology
The University
Newcastle upon Tyne
England
NE1 7RU
Tel. 0191-222 6795
|