Colchester's growing dependence upon supplies from a distance during the later fourteenth century, when consumption in the borough was growing, seems to have become even more accentuated in the first half of the fifteenth. For certain agricultural products the low costs of water transport, coupled with economies of bulk trading and a growth of expertise amongst Colchester's merchants, ensured that large consignments came from outside the local marketing region. A major source of grain for Colchester was the east coast of Norfolk, where the intensive cultivation of barley was a long established feature of agricultural economy. As it happens, manorial accounts have survived from one of the manors in this region which supplied Colchester with malt in the first half of the fifteenth century, namely Ormesby Hall in Ormesby St Margarets, which belonged to the Clere family. The recorded sales, shown in Table 17.1, add considerably to the evidence of the grain trade available from Colchester's own archives. Evidently a number of burgesses at this time went to Norfolk for malt, and one of them had made it a habit. Purchases were made when prices were low as well as when they were high, demonstrating that this was no emergency trade limited to years of dearth.