Tudor Chaddisbrooke

Two of the inventories analysed by the Wills Team were those of John Aslott (died 1565) and his wife Alice (died 1567), who were: "in the business of selling wool and cloth. John had a pair of scales and weights, a pair of stockards for carding wool, wool yarn, and a load of wool in his inventory. Alice's inventory included `two pare of stockards and waytes and woll and yarne and clothe` valued at £4 l0s. In 1567 Thomas son of John Aslott paid rent for a cottage and garden `on the north side of the churchyard', and it may have been from here that the business was conducted, but this or another Thomas Aslott also rented a dwelling and twelve acres from Richard Allen." John Aslott actually owned three houses, two in Yateley. One Yateley property was the cottage of the north side of the cemetery ie where Chaddisbrooke and Discoveries stand today. John's other house, next door, is now named Ye Olde Vicarage in the List of Building of Special Architectural or Historic Interest. In 1567 it was called Lewes', and was rented from Richard Allen. In his 1992 report on the renovations and conversions then being carried out to Chaddisbrooke House, Geoff Hoare also investigated John Aslott: He was apparently a man of some substance. The inventory of his possessions refers to 6/7 rooms and he also owned a house in Wokingham which he left in equal shares to two of his daughters. He owed money to a Thomas Hall for oil and soap and also to Grabriel Polston, a London grocer, possibly for goods that were sold in the shop mentioned in the inventory. He was owed money by a tailor (Anderson of Wokingham), which coupled with reference to shears, wool, cloth, yarn etc in the inventory, and money owed to `Brown the dyer' itemised in his wife's will, possibly indictaes he dealt in cloth." Good light is required for working with wool. In both inventories the wool, yarn, the shears and the stockards are upstairs, and not in the shop. So was John Aslott's Elizabethan shop Yateley's earliest known grocery shop? It's a bit more interesting than that....

NEXT: John Aslott - Yateley's Wool Brogger

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