Increasing house prices is one of the most frequently discussed – and worried about – topics.
One of the most fascinating items on display at the British Museum is a 13th century mortgage, carved into a stone brick.
Dated Sunday 11 June 1217, and written in Sanskrit mixed with the local dialect in Nagari script, the enormous brick records a mortgage against a loan. (I suspect that if you took out enough mortgages, you could build a house out of the mortgage bricks!)
