QUESTION: I am investigating a church history in the UK whereby a rebuilding cost was £1,200 in 1810. Can you please suggest what figure I should use as a modern idea of this cost.
My audience will be local people, people who have connections with the former owners of the 3000 acre estate, descendants of former residents, descendants of those buried in the local churchyard. Our church was founded in about 1300 and has been rebuilt about three times.
ANSWER: The website says:
If you want to compare the value of a £1,200 Project in 1810 there are three choices. In 2017 the relative:
real cost of that project is £79,480.00
labour cost of that project is £992,500.00
economic cost of that project is £5,225,000.00
I think you tell your audience that while an inflation calculator would say that the £1,200 in 1810 represents about £80,000 in today’s money, but the relative cost of hiring workers to do the rebuilding would be about a million of today’s pounds. In other words, that £1,200 would have hired a large number of workmen’s hours and that may have been the biggest part of the cost.