INDUSTRIES 



persons, whilst in 1567, when Elizabeth was 

 firmly established on the throne, loads of slates 

 were bought for repairs done to the Queen's 

 Majesty's house at Collyweston.' 



Not only were these heavy tiles of stone- 

 slate constantly employed in the district 

 where quarried, as at Burghley House in the 

 earlier work there, but also carried across the 

 county border. At Cambridge they were em- 

 ployed for roofing St. John's Chapel and Trinity 

 Great Court, and to some extent at Corpus 

 and Peterhouse, though now partially replaced 

 by other material. Watson, the episcopal 

 chemist of the eighteenth century, comments 

 on the durability of the Collyweston slate used 

 at Cambridge, but declares that it imbibes more 

 water and retains it longer than the Westmor- 

 land variety, though on the other hand it does 

 not imbibe half so much, nor retain it for a 

 quarter of the time that a common tile does.'' 



Towards the end of Elizabeth's reign and in 

 the time of her successor considerable litigation 

 took place as to manorial rights and questions of 

 tithe in Collyweston. During one of the 

 earliest of these cases, in 31 & 32 Elizabeth,' 

 Thomas Smith deposed that the queen's officers 

 or their deputies used to dig slate of all the 

 tenants' lands there except the glebe. He 

 further stated that he had known no person of 

 Collyweston dig slate of the glebe there until 

 now lately. William Woolman confirmed this, 

 and deposed that he had known the parsons and 

 their farmers interrupted and forbidden to dig 

 slate by Mr. Lewys and Mr. Dallyson (officers 

 of the queen). Clement Lewys, a son of the 

 former officer, stated that his father took away 

 the tools from the men appointed by Arthur 

 Bannister, the farmer of the parsonage, to dig 

 slate, but at the earnest request of Sir Edmund 

 Brudenell, who needed slate for his buildings, 

 appointed him a slate-pit on the queen's ground. 

 William King confirmed the fact that Bannister 

 dug slate for Sir Edmund till he was forbidden 

 by the king's officer, and he also remembered 

 tfiat the long land in the Conduit Field, parcel of 

 the glebe, was digged before the coming of the 

 present incumbent, Mr. Hunt. He also de- 

 clared, and this is worth notice, that the lease- 

 holders and copyholders of Collyweston dig slate 

 upon their own grounds. The statement of the 

 next witness, however, shows clearly that this 

 right was conditional on a fine to the lord. 

 ' Mr. Dale and Constance Smyth, being lessees 

 for years, and also the copyholders there, have 

 used to dig slate of their grounds so leased and 

 held, compounding with the officer for 31. a pit.' 

 Judging by the depositions'* taken in 11 James I, 



' Accts. Eich. K.R. -^^ (P.R.O.). 

 ' Chemical Essays, iv, 3 1 6. 

 ' Exch. Dep. 31 & 32 Eliz. Mich. No. I 

 Northants. 



' Exch. Dep. Easter, 1 1 James I, 24 Northants. 



2 297 



some of the copyholders objecting to slate being 

 dug by the officers of the manor on the arable 

 lands of their holding, had recouped themselves, 

 carrying away ' ten loads of slate to make slate, 

 worth as slate about five marks.' Zachary Hunt, 

 the parson who had also figured in the former case, 

 declared from the testimony of ancient men of that 

 town, that ' the custom of digging of slate upon 

 the copyhold lands ' was of long standing. One 

 Richard Cordale, of Easton, aged sixty years 

 and thereabouts, in reply to a question about the 

 Conduit Field, deposed : ' In those pits was the 

 first place that he wrought when he was pren- 

 tice ; the place where he digged when he was 

 first set on work was arable ground. The 

 digging was for both slate and stone. He knows 

 not the continuance.' Probably it is a fair in- 

 ference from these Jacobean depositions that 

 roofing-slate was then made from the stone 

 blocks in the way described by Morton a hundred 

 years after. The slate-stone after exposure to 

 the frost was cleft along the fissures or seams 

 with any fit tool.' 



There is a curious Northampton proverb,* ' It 

 is all along o' Collyweston,' which has been 

 thought to refer to these famous slates. Their 

 detractors declare that the Collyweston slate is 

 heavy, hard to fix, and unless well fixed liable to 

 slip. In fact, that picturesque though Colly- 

 weston roofing may be, it is, unless executed in 

 an unusually high-class style, apt to prove a 

 disappointment. This explanation does not 

 commend itself to the natives of Collyweston. 

 To them the proverb voices the jealousy of 

 competing thatchers and of the traders in blue 

 slates and tiles. 



A quarry rather less ancient than some of 

 those already mentioned, and not so favourably 

 situated in respect to water-carriage, was that of 

 Raunds. The ' Ranee Rag ' or marble was long 

 famous for chimney-pieces and window-tables, 

 whilst Thomas Grimbold, one of the stone- 

 masons employed in the rebuilding of Clare 

 Hall in 1638 and later, was a native of the 

 place and belonged to a family identified with 

 stone-working. His business passed to Robert 

 Grimbold, son of Edward and Mary Grimbold, 

 of Raunds, and him we find in 1676 as the 

 master-mason of the new library of Trinity 

 College, Cambridge.' The stone of Stanwick 

 was similar to that of Raunds. Two quarries in 

 the west of the county furnished stone often 

 used together, the white marble of Culworth 

 and the dark, almost black, stone of Byfield. 

 The halls of many of the older houses of the 

 gentry in that part of the county were formerly 

 paved with these marbles, alternately set in 

 squares and highly polished. Harlestone also 

 furnished a great quantity of stone in the 



'■" Morton, op. cit. 489. 



' Markham, Xortianlj Proverbs, 22. 



' Willis, op. cit. iii, 532, 533. 



38 



