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INDUSTRIES the building of St. George's Chapel in the sixteenth year of Edward IV. In the year 1556 in the book of accounts of 'y charges of building and Erection of the Almes Knights lodgings within the honour and castle of Wyndesor ' we find an entry : ' Timber for the upp lodgings was brought out of several places following Ashinge, Hurste, Bynfield, Water Cheley, Sunning hill parke, Wokefield. Timber feld and hewed out of Bagshot parke, Cranbourne Chace, Mote parke, for the same lodgings.' l For the building of Eton College timber was brought in large quantities, oak from London, Easthampstead, Foliejon Park, Sunninghill and Windsor Forest, and elm from Maiden- head and other places. 2 Berkshire woods, the Forest and the Great Frith supplied the great ' warfage of Timbre ' at Maidenhead which Leland saw in the time of Henry VIII., and Cranbourne and Mote Park yielded timber for the works for supplying the castle with water. 3 The corporation of Windsor paid 4 13^. 4^. to Thomas Benet in the time of Henry VIII. to buy timber for the bridge at Windsor, and very numerous other pur- chases were made in subsequent years for the same purpose. The trees of the forest of Windsor were extensively used for the ships of the English navy. In a survey of the Great Park made 27 February 1649-50 it is recorded, ' The totall of the trees which are marked for the use of the navy within the severall Walkes of the said park are in all Two thousand six hundred and foure trees.' * It will be understood from what has been already stated that before the advent of rail- ways and the extension of the system of canals the river Thames was the principal means of transit of goods and the great high- way of traffic. As early as the reign of John considerable quantities of wine and pro- visions were transmitted to and from Windsor by boats on the river. 5 The king in 1205 gave licence to William FitzAndrew to have one vessel to ply on the Thames between Oxford and London without any impediment to him or his men on the parts of the bailiff of Wallingford or the bailiff of Windsor. 8 Edward II. paid boats' hire for his son and his knights and clerks from Windsor to the Tower of London. Stone had frequently to be conveyed by the Thames to Reading, and 1 Ashm. MS. No. 1125, ff. 66, 66b. 3 R. R. Tighe and J. E. Davis, Annals of Windsor, i. 338. 3 Ashm. MS. No. 1125, ff. 68-71. 4 Ann. of Windsor, ii. p. 242. Rot. Claus. 7 John. 8 Ann. of Windsor, i. 58, when the dwellings of the Poor Knights at Windsor were built ' Cane ' or Caen and other building stone were ' fetched from Reading Abbey by water ' and conveyed to Windsor. 7 Stone for the building of Eton College was conveyed by the river, Caen stone and ragg stone from the Boughton quarries near Maidstone, Yorkshire stone vi4 London, the cost of the freight from London to Windsor being is. ^d. per ton. Headington quarries near Oxford gave a further supply, which the great river conveyed to the site of the rising college. 8 In the time of Henry VIII. both persons and goods were usually conveyed by boat from Windsor to London. ' The quality ' travelled by barges, their servants and goods by boat. It must not be thought that the Thames was then the placid stream that affords delight to oarsmen. The dangers of the Thames in winter, in times of flood and storm, were serious obstacles to traffic, as the records of the sessions of the county show, to which we shall have occasion to refer later. No less inconvenient was the stranding of the barges in summer, when as Dr. Plot states ' in dry times barges do sometimes lie aground three weeks or a month or more as we have had sad experience this last summer.' Pre- vious to the Act of Parliament of 1624 providing for ' the opening of the river from Burcote by Abingdon to Oxford ' the system of flashing was used, stanches being placed at the shallow places which penned up the river, and when suddenly removed the barges were floated by the sudden rush of the water over the shallows below. The process of working the boats up stream over the shallows was difficult, as they had to be laboriously hauled up with the aid of a capstan on the bank. Dr. Plot describes the ' folding-doors, floodgates and turn-pikes ' that were con- structed after the passing of the Act at Iffley, Sandford and Culham, but in spite of these the river afforded an imperfect means of inland navigation, and the old system of ' flashing ' was continued at many weirs to a late period, even as late as the beginning of the last century. Wrecks were frequent and numerous. Thus in the book of the County Sessions of n April 1726 we find that ' Ben- jamin and Joseph Tomkins exhibited their complaints alleging that about the third day of March last 1 30 quarters of malt was greatly damaged by water by means of the casting away or sinking of a certain barge or vessel in the River of Thames at or near Purley, ' Tighe and Davis, Ann. of Windsor, i. 606. s Ibid. i. 336. 375