After a wonderful summer trip to Wales and to London, I am returning my attention to medieval economies, industries, and trading.

My most recent find was English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products (The Hambledon Press, 1991). Discovering this book’s existence and securing access to a copy both took time. You probably will need access to a decent library system or a university library to get your hands on a copy.

The range of topics will reward your effort. Editors John Blair and Nigel Ramsay gathered essays from authoritative contributors on the following topics: stone; alabaster; Purbeck marble; tin, lead, and pewter; copper alloys; gold, silver, and precious stones; iron; pottery and tile; brick; vessel glass; window glass; leather; textiles; antler, bone, and horn; and wood. The book also provides many suggestions for further reading; it is a useful treasure trove for aspiring medievalist worldbuilders or historical fiction writers.

I anticipate expanding this post to include some examples as well as writing several posts on specific industries or important trades. Leather alone is important enough to deserve numerous posts.

Ronald M. Homer’s research into London’s pewterer shops, for example, is a good sample of the useful information for worldbuilders in this type of book. According to Homer’s data (71), the master Thomas Dounton employed seven journeymen and had eleven apprentices. But eighteen (18) shops, or 32 percent of the city’s pewterer shops, had only the master, while eleven (11), or 20%, had only the master and one apprentice or journeyman.

Other New Discoveries

Chiara Frugoni, Books, Banks, and Buttons and Other Inventions from the Middle Ages [2003(2001)]

Charles Kightly, Strongholds of the Realm: Defenses in Britain from Prehistory to the Twentieth Century (1979)

Ellen Wedemeyer Moore, The Fairs of Medieval England: An Introductory Study (1985)