Thomas de Houghton: A Royal Carpenter of the Later Thirteenth Century

Abstract

Much attention has been paid in recent years to the careers and conditions of service of some of the foremost English royal masons of the later medieval period. The craftsmen in wood, however, are on the whole less well known, partly, perhaps, because their medium is less durable than the mason's and therefore relatively fewer outstanding examples of their work have survived to witness to their skill. Carpenters of the capacity of Hugh Herland and timber work of the scale and quality of Westminster Hall roof are exceptions that prove the rule. There is, however, no lack of documentary evidence, the great bulk of it still unpublished, for the activities of many royal carpenters in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But the details are scattered in works accounts and wardrobe books, Liberate and Memoranda rolls, and until these prolific sources are searched systematically for the almost limitless information they contain, the foundation for any authoritative general work on medieval English building craftsmen will scarcely have been laid. Such a search has yet to be undertaken. Meanwhile, the purpose of the present note is to illustrate the general problem and the nature of some of the available sources by collating facts about a single craftsman that have come to light more or less accidentally in the course of research directed to another objective.