Getting goods about

In the twelfth century almost everything a town ate, wore or built had to be carried there by a person, an animal or a boat. How it travelled decided what it cost, and what it cost decided who could afford to trade in it.

On foot

The humblest carrier was a person. A thirteenth-century lawbook attributed to Bracton reckons "a reasonable day's journey" at twenty miles, and says a market should stand at least six and two-thirds miles from its neighbour. That was a third of a day to walk there, a third to trade, and a third to walk home. In practice markets were often closer: by 1250 they averaged about five miles apart in the Midlands. A countrywoman with eggs, butter, cheese or yarn in her baskets could reach one and be home by dark. No medieval figure survives for what she carried, but a basket or two was the limit.

The packhorse

For longer journeys and rough ground, goods went on the back of a horse. Manorial records are modest about loads: at Borley in Essex in 1308, a tenant's horse carried two bushels of salt, or three of wheat, which comes to between about 45 and 85 kilograms. The heavy-laden packhorse trains of the Pennines belong to a much later age. Packhorses needed no road and could cross fords and narrow bridges, which made them the carrier of hill country, moor and mine. Mules and donkeys, familiar elsewhere in Europe, seem to have been rare and costly in England.

The cart

On the lowland roads the workhorse was the two-wheeled cart. Around 1300 a cartload was reckoned at three or four quarters of wheat, between about 650 and 900 kilograms. In the twelfth century carts were still more often drawn by oxen than by horses. Oxen were cheaper to keep and stronger in mud, but slow, managing perhaps ten to fifteen miles a day to a horse's twenty or more. Horses were taking over hauling during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, one of the quieter revolutions of the period. Heavy four-wheeled wagons were rare, a lord's or an abbey's vehicle rather than a carrier's.

The river

Heavy goods went by water wherever they could. Historians reckon that moving a ton a mile by land cost roughly twice as much as by river and eight times as much as by sea. A single river boat on the Severn might carry eight or ten tonnes, rowed or hauled from the bank; that was the load of a dozen carts. Wine came up the rivers by the tun, a cask that weighed about a ton when full. Stone, lead and grain went by barge, and timber was often simply floated downstream. Few places in England were more than fifteen miles from navigable water, and the great towns grew on rivers or the coast for a reason.

Why timber went by water

Timber shows the problem plainly. By weight, a packhorse could carry four or five good oak boards; in practice, two or three, because boards of two or three metres overhang the animal, lever the saddle and catch on every hedge and gateway. A single cart carried thirty or more, and a barge hundreds. So the builder of a church or a hall sent for his timber by river, or by ox cart along the shortest road.

Weights and measures

Goods were reckoned in units that varied from place to place. A sack of wool weighed about 155 kilograms before the mid-thirteenth century. A quarter of wheat was eight bushels, a little over 200 kilograms, and Magna Carta made the London quarter the standard for the realm. A tun of wine was about a ton. A "load" of lead meant a cartload, though Derbyshire's load was lighter than the king's.

A caution

Almost no carrying figures survive from the twelfth century itself; most come from accounts of about 1230 to 1350, so the figures here are the best guide rather than a record. The twelfth century probably had more oxen, fewer horse carts and worse bridges than the numbers above suggest.

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In Wainfare the same rules apply: carts and rivers for bulk, packhorses for the hills, and the cost of a journey shapes every trade. See the carter, the wainwright, the crew and the porter, and goods such as common planks and wool.

Sources

• J. Langdon and J. Claridge, "Transport in Medieval England", History Compass 9/11 (2011).
• J. Claridge and J. Langdon, "Storage in medieval England: the evidence from purveyance accounts, 1295–1349", Economic History Review 64 (2011).
• Bracton, De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, vol. 3, p. 198 (trans. Thorne), Harvard Law School Library.
• "River navigation in Medieval England", Journal of Historical Geography (2000).
• J. Galloway, "One market or many? London and the grain trade of England", School of Advanced Study.
• J. Masschaele, Peasants, Merchants, and Markets: Inland Trade in Medieval England, 1150–1350 (1997), as reviewed on EH.net.
• Milton Abbas Local History Group, "Carrying services" (after J. Langdon).
• Gloucestershire County Council, "The Severn trow".
• Canterbury Cathedral, "How did they build that? Stone".

Written from a source-checked research report prepared for Wainfare.