I admit I am a bit of a compulsive collector of most things historical and attempting to put some kind of order to the collection when this piece turned up.

No credit terms back then, just invoice every year or so.

 

Interesting! I'm sure a church found it easier to get credit than a working man.

I take it the sheet was mailed just like that, no envelope or additional address?

 

Unfortunately the original envelope if there was one has disappeared, it may even have just been hand delivered, the attached one penny stamp is basically just taxation.

 

Look at the penmanship. Beautiful. Probably Andrew's wife did the billing?

 

How much is that?

Is it Five Pounds One Shilling and two pennies?

For Five pounds 12 shillings?

Or something else?

 

Five pounds, one shilling, and tuppence.

 

I'm about to get my spare bedroom skimmed for just less than £300. Maybe I should get another quote from Andrew Mickel.

 

7 pounds, 11 shillings and 9 pence, less the amounts already paid, (some 2 pounds, 10 shillings and 7 pence) leaving a balance due of 5 pounds, 1 shilling and 2 pence. Or, approximately £600. Seems cheap, doesn't it

 

Obviously little need for a credit controller back then

 

Thanks for that. The math actually makes sense now (although it took a peek at Wikipedia to refresh the 1/20/12 bit).

Now can you help me with dinner? Beef tongue is 3lbs 4.8oz. Should take about 50 minutes/lb. How many hours do I boil it?

 

I've never cooked beef tongue (or ox tongue as it's called here). A ham is 15 minutes a lb plus 20 minutes, then allow to cool in the stock. According to Delia, you should allow 3 hours, starting from cold, but you can be sure it's ready when the bone pulls out easily. She also suggests adding onion, garlic, bay, peppercorns and parsley to make the cooking stock. Give it a good scrub first to remove any hairs and make sure you remove all the skin after cooking.

If you really like that stuff, I can get my mother to give a recipe for brawn - https://thepantryfinefoods.com/2012/01/06/brawn-recipe-aka-pigs-head-terrine/

 

The sevens take a bit of getting used to.

That's a lot of credit to extend for many months. Five pounds, one shilling, is comparable labor value of 3,229 pounds today according to measuringworth.com, or even more as a share of the national GDP. I wonder if that was their understanding when the work was done.

There was an Andrew Mickel, architect, born 1877 and worked in Glasgow. Maybe descended from this builder.

The church:

 

Your first job as a apprentice Stuart ?

 

That wouldn't buy two decent double hung windows these days.

 

They discovered in 1820 that the tower's crown was too heavy for the tower's structure underneath it. With no alternative, they took the crown down. The aluminum (aluminium?) crown was installed in 1964 to replace it.

My google-foo isn't turning up paintings or pictures of the original tower crown. However, it was said to be similar to that of St. Giles Church, Edinburgh, shown here:

 

Worked on the leaded windows many times over the years, my rates were slightly higher

 

If anyone has an interest here is a couple of prints of the church with spire from 1693