A few days ago I was walking up Guildford High Street and
came across a salesman from the late 13th century. --- well a model
in a museum to be exact.
His smart attire included a coat of local Guildford coarse
blue woollen cloth called Kersey. This cloth was traded across all parts of
Europe hundreds of years before the machinations of Brexit in the 21st
Century! Business Dress was important back then as it is now.
The production of this cloth was a major industry of
Guildford with finishing processes of dyeing and fulling whose houses were
sited on the banks of the River Wey.
Under a shop at 72-74 Guildford High Street is an
undercroft. Distinct from a basement an undercroft has a ceiling which is above street level which affords greater headroom at its entrance. This stone- vaulted semi- basement dates from the end of the 13th
century. Measuring by some thirty feet by nineteen, the Undercroft has a
rib-vaulted ceiling supported by two central columns. It is entirely built of
solid chalk known as ‘clunch’.
Whoever built it, the
high quality stonework testifies to his prosperity. The carving suggests this
undercroft was intended to be more than just a cellar or storeroom.
There is nothing that directly links this undercroft with
the wool trade.
It is
most likely there was some connection either directly with cloth dealing or
indirectly with the import of luxury goods. Such as wine attracted by the cloth
dealers’ wealth
The small town of Guildford at the time had a population of
barely a thousand dominated by a Norman Castle belonging to no lesser personage
than the King. It was not big enough to have separate trade guilds and so a
single Guild Merchant regulated the borough’s commerce.
On record it is known that the king would order wine from Bordeaux
in large quantities each year ( over 5,000 gallons* each year.
From the Eyre Rolls of 1294 are listed 5 wine sellers in
Guildford.
It is suggested that the owner of the undercroft might well
have been a merchant.
There is a surviving merchant house in French
Street , Southampton which was built in
around 1290. The merchant was named John Fortin who was a wine merchant
who traded in Bordeaux. Unlike the doorway in Fortin’s undercroft which is six
feet wide - wide enough to allow the tuns ( great barrels) of wine, the
narrower entrance of the Guildford undercroft is too narrow for a tun. The
experts suggest that wine transported in half-tun casks known as ‘butts’ or quarter-tuns
called ‘hogsheads’
*The wine gallon of 231 cubic inches originates from the
time of Edward 1. Wine casks were tuns of 252 gallons, pipes of 126, hogsheads
of 64, barrels of 32, kilderkins of 16 and firkins of 8. – There were many
local variations.
https://www.guildford.gov.uk/undercroft Definitely worth a visit if you are in Guldford
Source :The Medieval Undercroft – Matthew Alexander Copyright of Guildford Museum 2015
