TILE

A baked clay fragment of a handmade malting floor tile dating to the seventeenth to nineteenth century AD. The object is approximately rectangular in plan with one wall extending beyond the rectangular shape at one corner. Another corner is either damaged or worn to a 45 degree angle. The centre of the object has a square-shaped perforation extending to the bottom surface in which there are five small circular perforations, possibly for ventilation. The underside is otherwise flat and undecorated. The object measures 54mm in length, 44.7mm in width and is a maximum of 35.8mm in height. The square perforation has a width of 20.4mm. The round perforations in the base measure between 2mm and 3mm in diameter. The object weighs 95.8 grams.

Peter Crew comments: 'This is a 5S type, which would have had a regular square pattern of cells. The pattern is very common and would have been made by a range of manufacturers, but this is certainly not a Buckley fabric.'

'Early malt kilns, of a 16th or 17th date, usually included a kiln hair, a woven horse hair cloth on which the malt to be dried was placed. Although the earliest kiln tile patent was registered in 1699, it is unlikely that the use of perforated ceramic tiles became widespread until the later 18th century. With the malt being placed directly on perforated ceramic tiles the use of kiln hairs gradually ceased. Malt continued to be dried on perforated ceramic tiles until the last decade of the 20th century despite the fact that woven wire floors were in use from the late 18th century, and wedge wire floors were used from the later 19th century' (Patrick, A. 2011 'Malt kiln tiles in Gloucestershire'. Gloucestershire Society for Industrial Archaeology Journal, 19)