536 ON THE PRICE OF BUILDING MATERIALS. 



seems nearest to the average, and to suggest that by this 

 time the slate bought by the Oxford Colleges was of a 

 uniform size, most likely the ' small ' of earlier years. For 

 example, two Colleges, in 1586, buy slate at a mean of *]s. z\d. 

 The city purchases for its own buildings at 2os. the thousand, 

 and the proportion given above seems to be indicated. In 1591 

 Corpus Christi College buys at 5*. the load, All Souls at 6s., but 

 the former College also buys at 2cxr. the thousand. In 1596 All 

 Souls College buys at 8s. the load, and the entry allows one to 

 infer that 400 went to the load, for the quantity bought is seven 

 loads and one hundred, at 8s. the load, and the whole cost is 

 58.$-. Altogether the evidence seems to show that to reduce 

 loads to thousands, the former should be multiplied two and 

 a-half times. 



Slates by load and thousand are common in the earlier 

 years, but become scantier as time goes on, the reason being 

 that which has been so often referred to, the abandonment of 

 private stores for contracts, a practice which commenced at 

 Oxford long before it was adopted at Cambridge. 



Slates are sometimes purchased at Cambridge by S. John's 

 College. They were procured, if I can draw an inference from 

 a single entry in 1681, at Colley Weston in Northamptonshire; 

 and, probably owing to the cost of carriage, in this case 8s. a 

 load, are a good deal dearer than they were at Oxford. I have 

 found them also at Worksop and at Winchester, if, as seems 

 obvious, tegulae scissae are to be taken as slates, a name used 

 in 1672. Cambridge purchases are generally made by the 

 thousand, and I should infer from the price that the entry of 

 loads in 1681 is of thousands also. 



From the facts then which I have collected I conclude that 

 the average price of a thousand slates at Oxford and elsewhere 

 was during the whole period 2is. $\d., and that on the whole 

 it shows no material change during the whole time. It is 

 probable that slate-making in the quarries was a bye industry, 

 for certainly the quarries were worked, in Oxfordshire at 

 least, for building as well as for roofing purposes, and that the 



