In the sixteenth century the distress was, as usual, at its worst. At the visitation of the Chichester diocese by Bishop Sherburn in 1521 the cloister of Easebourne needed roofing and Rusper was "in magno decasu"; six years later Rusper was still "aliqualiter ruinosa"[485]. At the Norwich visitations of Bishop Nykke the church of Blackborough was in ruins, and the roofs of cloister and frater at Flixton were defective; while at Crabhouse buildings were in need of repair and the roof of the Lady chapel was ruinous[486]; Joan Wiggenhall must have turned in her grave. Bishop Longland's visitations of the diocese of Lincoln show a similar state of affairs. In 1531 he commanded the Abbess of Elstow "that suche reparacons as be necessarye in and upon the buildinges within the said monasterye, and other houses, tenements and fearmes thereto belonging, be suffycyently doon and made within the space of oon yere," and the Prioress of Nuncoton, "that ye cause your firmary, your chirche and all other your houses that be in ruyne and dekaye within your monastery to be suffycyently repayred within this yere if itt possible may"; and reminded the nuns of Studley that they "muste bestowe lardge money upon suche reparacons as are to be doon upon your churche, quere, dortor and other places whiche ar in grete decaye"[487]. At Goring, also, the nuns all complained that the buildings were utterly out of repair, especially the choir, cloister and dorter[488].
The frequency of fires in the middle ages was probably often to blame for the ruin of buildings. There were then no contrivances for extinguishing flames, and the thatched and wooden houses must have burned like stubble. Thus it was that "thorow the negligens of woman[489] with fyre brent up a good malt-house with a soler and alle her malt there" at Crabhouse, and Joan Wiggenhall had to repair it at a cost of five pounds[490]. There is a piteous appeal to Edward I from the nuns of Cheshunt, who had been impoverished by a fire and sought "help from the King of his special grace and for God's sake"; but "_Nihil fiat hac vice_," replied red tape[491]; an undated petition in the Record Office says that the house, church and goods of the nuns had twice been burned and their charters destroyed[492]. In 1299 the Abbess of Wilton received permission to fell fifty oaks in the forest of Savernake "in order to rebuild therewith certain houses in the abbey lately burnt by mischance"[493]. At Wykeham, in Edward III's reign, the priory church, cloisters and twenty-four other buildings were accidentally burned down and all the books, vestments and chalices of the nuns were destroyed[494]. Similarly the nuns of St Radegund's, Cambridge, lost their house and all their substance by fire at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and in 1376 their buildings were again said to have been burned; either they had never recovered from their first disaster or a second fire had broken out[495]. The nuns of St Leonard's, Grimsby, apparently lost their granaries in 1311, for they sought licence to beg on the ground that their houses and corn had been consumed by fire, and in 1459 they asked for a similar licence, because their buildings had been burnt, and their land inundated[496]. The convent of St Bartholomew's, Newcastle, gave misfortune by fire as one reason for wishing to appropriate the hospital or chapel of St Edmund the King in Gateshead[497].