Money comparisons

[Maid Marian]

I have just received an old will of my ancestor who died in 1730.

Is there a table anywhere that gives a rough idea of how much an amount of money from the various eras might be worth today??

As an example - he was a mason and he left varying amounts of money to his children. He left 10 shillings to each of his 4 sons. Ten pounds to 3 of his daughters, and £15 to his 4th daughter, plus an extra £4 to be paid to each but I can't decipher the writing!

This seems to me to be a substantial amount of money in 1730 and I am curious to know what the equivelant amounts would be today.

[Jan1954]

Measuringworth (http://www.measuringworth.com/ppoweruk/?redirurl=calculators/ppoweruk/) has a converter that you can use to see the purchasing power of the British pound from 1264 to 2007.

[Maid Marian]

Brilliant :D
Thank you so much Jan

[Jan1954]

You're welcome. :D

[Geoffers]

Please don't take the calculation provided by such sites as being too exact. The changing value of money over time is dependent on many factors.

Do you take the value on an index of the average wage of unskilled labour/skilled labour? Or perhaps on the relative cost of basic consumer items (bread, meat)? Or the cost of land/rental costs for property? Levels of taxation, or cost of luxury items? Producing an index which combines all of these would be all but impossible, so as mentioned have a look of the comparison site, but do bear in mind that it will be a blunt tool which can only give an approximation.