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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgbrowning" data-source="post: 576894" data-attributes="member: 5724">Two timber quotes from "An economic history of medieval europe" by NJG pounds about big timber."The supply of building materials was often of critical importance, whether construction was in wood or stone. It was not easy to acquire the large beams required for roofing.""timber was floated [to paris] down the rivers from Burgundy."And from "Before the Industrial Revolution," by Carlo M. Cipolla about timber in general.."in mountain districts, the felling of trees in communal woods was regulated, from an early date, by precise rules. In 1281, the English Cistercians established enclosures of fire years to protect the seedlings in their forests. In the same period the Statutes of the Commune of Montaguloto dell'ardinghesea, in the district of Siena, laid down that every member of the Commune inheriting a hide [an amount of land] had to plant ten trees a year. In France from the end of the 13th centurey public concern about the fate of the forest gave rise to a series of royal as well as local provisions. In 1346 king Philip IV issued and ordinance regulating the cutting of trees and the consuption of timber.""In Lombardy the area covered with trees was reduced to less than 9 percent of the whole rural territory by 1555.""forested area represented about 33 percent of the french territory around 1500.""From the 12th and 13th centuries, in the mediterranean area, timber became scare and, in building, was increasing replaced by bricks, stone, and marble. But it remained practically the only fuel in use and continued to be the basic material for the making of furniture, ships, tools, and machines."Trading timber was quite lucrative when dealing with the big logs mostly gathered from the scandinavian area and timber was still pretty valuable when not in large logs. Also there is the issue of timber ownership.  There may be a forest right next to you (you being a small town of 1200 people) but the lord who owns the forest refuses to sell to you because he wants to hunt there.  gah, i seem to remember reading that in england the kings controlled something like 15% of all the forests and forbade anything but hunting in them.. gods know where i read that bit, or if its actually correct.. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Ah, the bad thing about responding to questions like this is that im forced to realize just how much i've left out of the book im writing... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /> joe b.</blockquote>

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