WEIGHT

Incomplete cast lead apothecary weight block, square in plan and flat in profile, missing a corner, and therefore about a quarter, of the plate which is 23 mm by 21 mm. There is a serifed letter 'F' above a lombardic 'n' in two quarters of the four, divided by a cross-shaped border, but the letter to the left of the F is illegible. This block has been cast to make four weights, three of which are intact and the fourth is missing. Each has a square frame containing a motif resembling a letter M with pellets along each arm.The weight now weighs 7.75 g, but would have originally weighed over 10 g, so that each weight would have been about 2.6 g. Apothecary weights were used to weigh small amounts of medicines and often weighed less than 2 g. They were based on the English troy ounce system where one ounce equated to 31.1 g and a 'scruple' (which was equivalent to a penny in the Medieval period) was one twenty-fourth of that ounce or 1.3 g (Biggs & Withers, 2000, 51). So these weights, once divided, would have equated to two scruples. The corner of the weight may have been deliberately removed to make it lighter, as is seen in square coin weights of a similar size in Biggs & Withers (2000), on page 47, No.145.

Biggs & Withers (2000) illustrate an apothecary weight with a lombardic 'n' weight on page 52, No.186, which dates from the 16th to the 17th century, but serifed letters like the 'F' are likely to be more modern, so this weight may have been used into the 18th century when brass apothecary weights replaced lead examples (Biggs & Withers, 2000, 51).