Shopping list found! I love this...

[Lordfrontpaw]

From 1633 (from Lara Maiklem's facebook account - London Mudlark).

For those who don't know her, she mudlarks and finds amazing items on riverbanks.

'This ancient shopping list was found under the floorboards at Knowle House in Kent during renovations by the National Trust.'

It says:

“Mr Bilby, I pray p[ro]vide to be sent too morrow in ye Cart some Greenfish, The Lights from my Lady Cranfeild[es] Cham[ber] 2 dozen of Pewter spoon[es]: one greate fireshovell for ye nursery; and ye o[t]hers which were sent to be exchanged for some of a better fashion, a new frying pan together with a note of ye prises of such Commoditie for ye rest.
Your loving friend
Robert Draper
Octobre 1633
Copthall”

This is fascinating but what was it doing under the floorboards?

Don't you just love it? I want to know what a Greenfish is - and will they be cooked in the fryingpan?

What are green fish?

Maybe it fell through a crack? Or maybe a child was involved (remembering my switch card getting posted through the flooring by DS when he was tiny)!

green fish...

Greenfish is unsalted cod according to this article

www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/seventeenth-century-shopping-list-discovered-under-floorboards-historic-english-home-180961986/

oops didnt link

Oh wow, fascinating!

oops did link - but it's worth showing twice!

Are you sure that notes old? Looks like it's been hole punched to go in a ring binder :)

This is amazing.
Another fascinating thing to note - the 'ye' is actually a modern reading of an old letter called a thorn, which looked a bit like a 'p' but with the side bar extending higher above the loop. The 'e' was then written above the thorn. You can see it on the last line, before 'prises'.

The word has always been pronounced as 'the', never with a Y sound.

Two dozen spoons! Where were all the spoons disappearing to?
Just like tea spoons nowadays.

Just googled it - it's not a new find - www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/seventeenth-century-shopping-list-discovered-under-floorboards-historic-english-home-180961986/

ClaudiaWankleman - so its not 'YE OLDE' but 'The olde' - how disappointing!

Nice

That's superb. I was going to say what Claudia said too. Fascinating.

Nobody said it was a new find, fascinating though!

How amazing. I would love to know why they needed two dozen spoons.

Feel like I need a greate fire shovell for the nursery. Excellent for keeping the kids in line.

silver1977 - true, I didn't even wonder when it was found, but that was in relation to someone asking if it was real (so I suppose they've had time to test it).

And 2 dozen spoons - if it was anything like my office they will be gone in a week!!

Im a building archaeologist. Its amazing what we find under floorboards

What a job! But anything dead I hope - but then they did put dead critters into the wall sometimes for protection/spells didn’t they? Wasn’t there a rumour of a child buried under the front steps of a Hawksmoor church in London?

Not a shopping list per se but in a similar vein one of my favourite documents is a letter from Margaret Paston (waves at any medieval historians on this thread!) to her husband from 1441.

Heavily summarised but in she asks him to buy and send some fabric to make a gown because she has only one gown to wear this winter and it is 'so cumbersome that I am weary to wear it.' Then she talks about having asked her father to get her a girdle but her father said the husband would not get one made. But she's sure that's just her father making excuses and will her husband please have one made because she's desperate 'for I am wax so fetis' (fetis meaning neat - she's being ironic because she's heavily pregnant).

Then it turns out her midwife has been laid up with sciatica for 15 or 16 weeks but has promised that when the time comes she will be there 'though she should be crod in a barrow'.

And the final part of letter she asks her husband to wear a token she sent him to remember him by because 'ye have left me such a rembrance that maketh me think upon you both day and night when I would sleep' (translation: I can't sleep a wink thanks to this damn pregnancy so you'd better be thinking of me too).

It's the document that really brought home to me that people in the past were not so very different and, whilst some beliefs and attitudes have changed, we'd probably still have a lot in common. I could see Margaret posting on Mumsnet for sure...