We often imagine medieval life as dull, dirty and short, with little in the way of material comfort or decoration. However, medieval Londoners were importing toys, treats and trinkets by the boatload centuries before the modern festive rush.
Searching in the records of imports contained within London’s extensive late medieval customs accounts, we found that medieval Londoners, much like their modern-day counterparts, were hooked on mass-produced, cheaply imported items.
Everyday goods from tennis balls to children’s dolls and board games were imported by the thousands, with prices that show they were not elite luxuries. This reveals that medieval people had plenty of “stuff” and suggest an attitude to consumerism that’s not so very different from our own.
Our new project has digitised records of more than 200,000 consignments of imports and exports which passed through the Port of London between 1380 and 1560.
Historians have looked at these sources for generations, particularly to analyse exports of English wool and cloth. Until now though, little attention has been paid to the imported goods themselves. These records give a real insight to the variety and rich material culture of everyday life. We have counted thousands of different commodities, from printed alphabets to zinziber (ginger).
By analysing the goods on which Londoners paid customs duty each November and December we have uncovered a detailed picture of the objects imported in time for Christmas celebrations.
Some of the richest Londoners, such as the Cely family whose letters from the 1470s survive, travelled to Bergen-op-Zoom, near Antwerp, in modern Belgium, to buy from the “Cold Mart”. One of Europe’s biggest trade fairs, this market, which began on November 6 each year, could be seen as a forerunner of a modern Christmas Market.
London Museum
For most people, however, homewares, trinkets and gifts were imported by an army of merchants, many of them Dutch and Flemish. These traders then sold them on in London’s haberdashers’ shops – many of them on London Bridge – and via travelling chapmen (pedlars) who sold door-to-door in the countryside.
Seasonal highlights included children’s rattles and dolls, tennis balls, gaming boards, dice, devotional items such as rosary beads and Agnus Dei jewellery. Large quantities of fruit and spices appear throughout the records alongside jewellery and fine leather gloves, which were particularly common gifts.
In November 1480, one single consignment included dozens of paintings, whistles, harp strings, hundreds of candlesticks, a “box of japes” (tricks or toys)’, and “14 dozen Jesuses”.
We’ve found amazing amounts of evidence for Londoners’ reading, and writing habits, with printed books imported by the basket, chest, or even by the barrel from the 1480s onward. The aptly named Wynkyn de Worde, England’s second recorded printer, paid custom duties on “one hoggeshede bookes” (yes, the same as a hogshead beer barrel) worth 50 shillings in 1507.
Frustratingly, though we hardly ever get the title or description of individual books. Paper, both for writing, and as wrapping paper, was an equally regular import. While spectacles, often with matching cases, were routinely imported by the hundred.
Less common, but fascinating consignments illustrate London’s emerging global connections. These include coconut shells, often set with silver to turn them into cups, and “popingays” (pet parrots), one of which was assessed for customs duties in 1421 along with a sack of seeds supplied as its food.
It’s striking that so many of these objects were clearly ubiquitous but have otherwise left so little trace. That’s precisely because they were meant to be cheap and disposable. Customs accounts provide rare evidence of the everyday possessions, and shopping habits, of ordinary medieval people, revealing how many goods were lost to time.
While London Museum holds some of the finest surviving examples of medieval household objects, the customs accounts show how many more once existed.
By looking at these records as sources for cultural history, we can begin to trace the movement of tastes and consumer preferences across borders. Our approach reveals that customs accounts don’t only document trade, but illuminate life.
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