Storage in medieval England: the evidence from purveyance accounts, 1295–13491

As a contribution to the long-running debate concerning the extent and motivation of medieval storage, this article uses purveyance accounts to examine such facilities in England prior to the Black Death. Three hundred and fifteen cases of predominantly urban storage were recorded for 97 communities for the products of agriculture purchased by the purveyors, mostly threshed grains. When these 315 cases were analysed using an Excel database, it was found that, in contrast to the often magnificent barns on monastic and other lordly estates, this storage was much smaller and informal, often indistinguishable, it seems, from the domestic storage for families themselves. As modest as it was, however, it likely played an important role in the increasing commercialization of medieval England, even perhaps to the extent of making society at the time more susceptible to subsistence crises.