Monthly grain prices in England, 1270-1955

The datafiles:

Wheat and malt prices in Winchester (1657-1817), spreadsheet (.xls, 36Kb)

Wheat prices in Oxford (1618-1645), spreadsheet (.xls, 20 Kb)

Wheat and barley prices in Cambridge (1594-1681), spreadsheet (.xls, 37 Kb)

Wheat, barley and oats prices in various towns (1270-1620), spreadsheet (.xls, 128 Kb)

Barley and oats prices in England (1841-1929), spreadsheet (.xls, 54 Kb)

Wheat, barley and oats prices in England (1929-1955), spreadsheet (.xls, 68 Kb)

This file contains monthly prices of wheat, barley and oats in English shillings per Winchester quarter (c. 291 litres). The data are used in a paper by Nicholas Poynder, Grain storage in theory and history (.pdf, 40 Kb). Paper presented at the Third Conference of the European Historical Economics Society, Lisbon, October 29-30, 1999.



Other datafiles relating to this paper:

Monthly Grain Prices at Les Halles, Paris. 1549-1698

Monthly Wheat Prices in Cologne, 1550-1700

Monthly grain prices in Siena, 1550-1694

For source references see Table 1 in the paper.

The following Saints' days are used:

Michaelmas 29 September St. Thomas' 21 December Christmas 25 December Candlemas 2 February Lady Day 25 March Midsummer 24 June Lammas 1 August

Prices are measured in shillings per Winchester quarters of c. 291 litres.

1 quarter = 8 bushels

1 bushel = 4 pecks

The silver content of the English currency can be obtained from: Robert C. Allen and Richard W. Unger, with the assistance of Shannon Parker and Stephanie McWhinnie, Allen - Unger Database, European Commodity Prices 1260-1914