| Tanning (Tanning, Tannery, Tanner) | | The process of preparing animal skins before they are made into leather goods. | |
| Temperance (Temperance) | | A movement to persuade people not to drink alchohol. | |
| Tenement (Tenement, Tenements) | | A large building divided up into many dwellings and often lived in by poorer families who pay rent for them. A tenement can also be a shop within a building. | |
| Tenter (Tenter, Tenters) | | A framework with hooks that is used for stretching and drying cloth. It is where the phrase 'on tenterhooks', meaning stretched or worried, comes from. | |
| Terracotta (Terracotta) | | A building material made from unglazed, baked clay used for tiles, decoration on buildings, garden pots etc. It is reddish brown in colour. | |
| Textile (Textile, Textiles) | | A general word for different types of woven or knitted cloth or fabric. | |
| Threshing (Threshing, Thresh, Threshed) | | The process of separating the ears of corn from the husks (seed case) and stalks. Ancient threshing consisted of pounding the grain and then throwing it into the wind, which would carry off the light husks and allow the clean grain to fall to a mat. | |
| Tithe (Tithe, Tithes) | | A tenth part of a person's goods and produce that was originally paid to the church to support the local vicar and the Poor. It was a type of tax. | |
| Tower mill (Tower mill, Tower mills) | | A Tower Mill is a type of windmill which consists of a brick or stone tower. A roof or cap which can be turned to bring the sails into the wind sits on top of the tower. | |
| Tracery (Tracery, Traceried, Traceries) | | The thin stone or wooden bars in the top of a Gothic window, screen, or panel, that creates a decorative pattern. | |
| Transept (Transept, Transepts) | | In a cross-shaped church, the part of the church forming the short arms of the cross on either side of the main part of the church or nave. The point where the nave and transept cross is called the crossing. | |
| Tuberculosis (Tuberculosis) | | An infectious bacterial disease transmitted through the air that mainly affects the lungs. It was often called TB. It was treated by sending patients to a hospital in a place with clean air for bedrest, often outside. See Sanatorium. | |
| Tudor (Tudor, Tudors) | | The Tudor period lasted from 1485 until 1603 when all the kings and queens were from the Tudor family. Timber framed buildings were the most common architectural style in the Tudor period. | |
| Turnpike (Turnpike, Turnpikes, Turnpike Trust, Turnpike Trusts, Turnpiked) | | Turnpikes were gates set across a road to make people stop and pay a toll or fee. The Turnpike Act of 1663 meant a toll/fee had to be paid to travel on certain roads. This was to pay for their upkeep. This lead to the creation in 1706 of Turnpike Trusts - private companies set up to collect the tolls and maintain the roads. | |
| Typesetter (Typesetter, Typesetters, Typesetting) | | A person who sets type. Formerly an employee in a printshop who manually took pieces of moveable type and put them together for printing. The pieces of type were put into a stick before being slid into the printing press. If they were put in the wrong way round then it would print out incorrectly - hence the expression getting hold of the wrong end of the stick. | |