470 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
However, we will take the larger figure. This will give for the 
eight miles of leat from Roborough to Plymouth about eight weeks 
work for 40 men, at eight yards each per day—a fair estimate of 
what a man would dig and throw to one side under similar conditions 
at the present time. Hence at the average weekly wage of 3s. the 
cutting would cost £48. We turn to the Corporate Accounts already 
cited, and find that the unappropriated amount spent by the 
Corporation “for and bringinge in of the leat” was £47 8s. 7d.— 
so close an approximation to the estimate that we seem justified 
in concluding that this part of the work was that carried out by 
the authorities of the borough, especially when we take the entries 
concerning the bridges thereon into account. There is really, 
however, a margin; for I have overestimated both the work done 
and the wages paid. 
We can test these figures in another way, less distinctly local. 
Mr. T. Brassey, M.P., than whom no one can speak with more 
authority, states that the average cost of English earthwork per 
cubic yard is 3°63d., or some £30 for each 2,000 yards. Eight 
miles then would cost £240, and taking a fifth of this, to equalize 
the value of money at the respective periods, gives also £48. We 
have been so accustomed to exaggerate the character and extent of 
the work done when the water was first brought in, that figures 
like these appear almost ridiculously small; yet the fact remains 
beyond all controversy that the excavation of the leat for the 
whole distance in ordinary ground could have been accomplished in 
the days of Elizabeth for £100. If the Corporation did eight miles 
out of the seventeen at that rate, what did Drake do for his £200 ? 
He did not spend it in compensation, for £100 had been allowed 
him extra for that ; and apart from the millers’ rights there can be 
no doubt, most of the land being, in the words of the Act, “ barren 
or heathy,” that £50 at the outside would have been extravagantly 
sufficient to buy the fee-simple of the whole of the thirteen or 
fourteen acres required, which he did not do. The rights of water- 
supply enjoyed by the owners of Whitleigh, Manadon, and Ham 
have been already noted as traditionally said to be the equivalent 
rendered for the passage of the stream through these properties, 
but whether that be so or not, it is an undeniable fact that the 
Corporation had subsequently to pay Sir Thomas Wise for land 
taken in the parish of Stoke Damerell, and to buy the fee-simple 
of the land at Sheepstor from Mr. Elford. 
