110 BEISTOL BUILDING STONES. 



to crashing stress is variable, two-inch cubes or prisms 

 yielding to a load of from 6| to 9 tons. The absorptive 

 power is also variable, from three to eight pints per cubic 

 foot, or from 6 to 16 per cent, by volume. 



The upper beds of the Dolomitic Conglomerate are much 

 finer in texture, and are used to a considerable extent 

 locally, Clifton College, Emanuel Church, and a great num- 

 ber oE houses in that part of Clifton being built of this 

 material, which has a colour varying from light orange 

 brown to yellow. Stones of this material have been built 

 into the cathedral, the old walls of which would almost seem 

 to be a piece of experimental work to test the durability of 

 different building stones. In the churches of. St. George's, 

 Easton, St. Mary's Portbury, Westbury, Honbury, in the ^ 



Mayor's Chapel, and in Portbury Priory, local Ti'ias of this 

 horizon is extensively employed. 



At Clevedon this rock is quarried, and is locally known 

 as Magnesian Limestone, which must not however bo con- 

 fused with the true Magnesian Limestone of the Permian 

 series, obtained at Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire. 



Before leaving the subject of Bristol building stones, I 

 may perhaps bo allowed to say something about those 

 stones which wore perhaps among the earliest materials 

 used in construction in our neighbourhood. I refer to those 

 which form the stone circles at Stanton Drew, erected, I 

 believe (if one may so speak of that which is, at the best, ^ 



a conjecture) by the Neolithic pro-Aryan inhabitants of 

 Britain. 



Of these stones Mi'. C. W. Dymond, C.E., writes (1877): 

 "Two of the stones are New Red Sandstone, — the rock of the 

 site ; one is similar to that obtained from Dundry, four miles 

 noi-th-wcst; a few are Limestone from neighbouring (juarries; 

 and the rest — forming by far the majority— are a ])obbly 



