Continuing our theme of plant materials used as rent, a peppercorn rent is a rent which is worth nothing, or next to nothing, its name being derived from the use of peppercorns, dried fruit of black pepper, Piper nigrum, to pay such rents.  The actual use of a peppercorn to pay an annual rent is said to date from the sixteenth or seventeenth century.  It’s not known how many of these rents continue to be paid, but, if this notice attached to the medieval Lendal Tower, at the east end of the Lendal Bridge, over the River Ouse, in York,  is correct, it at sometime was leased for an annual rent of a peppercorn.

Photographed August 2024.