Page:Mediaevalleicest00billrich.djvu/78

 custavit in omnibus," says the Record, "The hall cost so much altogether."

There is in existence the fragment of an account relating to expenses incurred in the building of the Guildhall, which seems to refer to this period. In this account the sums spent between Candlemas and July amount to rather less than £4. The rest of the document is torn away, but the fragment has a good claim to be admitted as part of the 1274 account. It will be noticed that the whole amount spent upon the site and building of this hall was £12 2s. 7d. The cost of building the present Town Hall, exclusive of the site, was £52,911 2s. 8d. The contrast is striking, after every allowance is made for the depreciation of money. But it may perhaps be said that it was the earlier builders who laid the foundations of this later and more ambitious enterprise, and in that sense "they builded better than they knew," or at any rate more expensively.

After the reconstruction of the building, it was occupied by the Guild Merchant, and used as their Guildhall for nearly a hundred years. The site is said to have comprised 20 yards and I foot in length, 9 yards in breadth at the East End, and 7 on the West. The building had a gabled roof, and consisted of a porch, a hall on the ground floor, and a large Solar, or Upper Chamber, which hung over the street, and sheltered four shops or market booths. These booths were let out by the Guild, at a rental of 4s. a year, from 1309 until 1346, after which date their use was presumably discontinued, as no later payments are mentioned.

The building appears to have been of moderate size. Throsby must have exaggerated in calling it "a place of considerable magnitude." Anyone who is acquainted with the average pitch of a 13th century roof, and also with the size of 13th century tiling slates, could perhaps make a rough estimate of the dimensions of the Upper Chamber based upon the number of slates, two and a half thousand, which were used in tiling the roof. These slates would be the famous blue slates of Swithland which have been quarried from time immemorial, and which covered the roof of the neighbouring Blue Boar Inn. 52