Note N — ON THE LATE, OR DEBASED, GOTHIC BUILDINGS OF OXFORD. From the Reign of Elizabeth to the end of the Seventeenth Century.
Reading edition
In these accounts, (for an opportunity of examining which I am indebted to the Rev. J. Griffith, Sub-Warden [now, in 1881, the Warden]), the masons who worked the stone for building are called Free masons, or Freestone Masons (which is probably the true meaning of the term), while the rest are merely called “labourers.” The cost of each window, with the name of the workman, is put down separately, the price of a chapel window being 6l., while those of the hall were 3l. 18s. each. It is curious, too, to find that the three statues over the entrance to the hall and chapel were cut by one of the free masons (William Blackshaw) employed on the other parts of the building. For each statue he was paid the sum of 3l.
The following prices and terms also appear, and are curious and interesting, [but great allowance must be made for the change in the value of money; it is probable that each shilling of the time of James I. was equivalent to at least ten shillings in the time of Queen Victoria]:—
Lodgement, 4d. per foot.
Window table, 4d. per foot.
Grass table, 4d. per foot.
Window lights, 3s. 4d. each.
Pillar stone, at 16d. per foot.
Cornish, 2d. per foot.
Gorgel table —at 4d. per foot.
Gargill
Gurgul
Gurgoll
Tun stone, or tun stuff —stones for chimney shafts, &c.
Tounel stones, or tunnel stones