51 6 ON THE PRICE OF BUILDING MATERIALS. 



absence of evidence as to whether the lime was carried or 

 carted, a fact which is sometimes stated, and as I gather from 

 the price generally implied. Small quantities, a few bushels, 

 were probably purchasable on the spot at all times. 



Lime very much varies in price, even when the unquestion- 

 able quarter is the unit. It is cheapest by far at Cambridge, 

 dearest at Oxford. Of course it is low-priced at Basing- 

 stoke and Canterbury, where chalk is very near. Now it seems 

 that the Oxford Colleges did not use the Headington stone for 

 lime, or indeed any of the local oolites, but went to Brill for 

 the article, as the accounts often state, the distance adding 

 by cost of carriage considerably to the price. Thus in 1610 

 a load at Brill costs 13^. 4^. on the spot, but the carriage is 

 6s. id. In the same year All Souls College buys a load 

 of Brill lime (which, it mentions incidentally, contained 33 

 bushels) for 2os. 6d. Here, though the statement is not made, 

 the cost of carriage is evidently included. On one occasion the 

 lime is said to be of chalk, and the price, 8j. a quarter, is very 

 high. The price at Eton, low at first, increases greatly during 

 the century. 



The fusion of all the prices by load or quarter into common 

 averages can only of course give a proof (especially when the 

 examples are numerous, as is not always the case) of the price 

 at which persons, ordinarily circumstanced, could buy lime. 

 Few places indeed in Southern England are very distant from 

 lime, and except the Eastern county examples, most of my 

 evidence comes from Southern England and Oxfordshire. 

 And although any particular year is no safe guide to the 

 general price, as for example 1642 or 1679 and j68o, because 

 in the former case the only evidence is from Cambridge, in 

 the latter only from Winchester, I think the general result 

 may be relied on, on the ground that the years correct each 

 other. 



I have not ventured, beyond putting the hypothesis in a 

 note, on treating the London hundreds in two of the later 

 years at three-fifths of the load, and therefore giving the load 



