Woodwork Tools in Early Modern Oxford

Oxford apprentices were routinely promised clothes, money or other items on the completion of their apprenticeships. This article focuses on the tools promised to woodworkers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which shed light on working practices. The trades represented included those of carpenter, joiner and cooper, though the range of activities was wider than these terms suggest and even included musical instrument making, an activity which is usually thought of as a specialism. The evidence comes chiefly from apprenticeship enrolment books and is supplemented by wills and inventories.