(3) _Repairs_ were a very serious item in the balance sheet of every monastic house, and in spite of the amount of money, which account rolls show to have been spent upon them, visitation reports have much to say about crumbling walls and leaking roofs. It was seldom that a year passed without several visits from the plumbers, the slaters and the thatchers, to the precincts of a nunnery; and once arrived they were not easy to dislodge. If perchance the nunnery buildings themselves stood firm, then the houses of the tenants would be falling about their ears; and once more the distracted treasuress must summon workmen. Usually the nuns purchased the materials used for repairs and hired the labour separately, and the workers were sometimes fed in the nunnery kitchen; for it was customary at this time to include board with the wages of many hired workmen. The accounts of St Radegund's, Cambridge, in 1449-50 will serve as an example of the expenditure under this heading[348]. It was a heavy year, for the nuns were having two tenements built in "Nunneslane" adjoining their house, and the accounts give an interesting picture of the building of a little medieval house of clay and wattle, with stone foundations, whitewashed walls and thatched roof. First of all Henry Denesson, carpenter, a most important person, was hired to set up all the woodwork at a wage of 23_s._ 4_d._ for the whole piece of work; he had an assistant John Cokke, who was paid 14_d._ for ten days' work; Simon Maydewell was kept hard at work sawing timber for his use for ten days at 14_d._ and over a cart load and a half of "splentes" (small pieces of wood laid horizontally in a stud wall) were purchased at a cost of 6_s._ 2_d._ Henry and John spent ten days setting up the framework of the two cottages, but they were not the only workers. The "gruncill" (or beam laid along the ground for the rest to stand on) had to be laid firmly on a stone foundation; the walls had to be filled between the beams with clay, strengthened with a mixture of reeds and sedge and bound with hemp nailed firmly to the beams. The account tells us all about these operations: