Industry II: Mining, Fishing, Salt-Making, Building and Urban Manufacturing

Unlike the cloth and tin industries, which are relatively well-documented, the sources for the other industries of medieval England are much more scattered and impressionistic. This chapter examines mining, fishing, salt-making, building and urban manufacturing in order not only to show what the surviving sources, whether royal, manorial, ecclesiastical or borough, reveal to us about these particular industries but also, more generally, to illustrate the kinds of evidence which are available for medieval industry and to discuss the problems involved in using them. For mining, manorial sources allow us to see fluctuations in the output of coal and lead; for fishing, a range of local sources show the shift in the industry from the ports of the east coast to the south-west; for the building industry, accounts for construction work reveal the costs of materials and details of labour conditions and pay; and for urban manufacturing, sources such as freemen’s rolls, property deeds, royal and borough court rolls, wills and poll tax returns reveal the variety of industries to be found in towns. Many of these sources omit female employment but the detailed records generated by the assize of ale do allow us to see how women’s role altered as the brewing industry became more professionalised and commercialised.