Slate (writing) Slate (writing) A slate is a thin piece of hard flat material, such as the rock also called slate, that is used as a medium for writing. The rock is “a metamorphic rock created by the recrystallization of the minerals in shale from clay to parallel-aligned, flat, flake-like minerals such as mica”. The writing slate consisted of a piece of slate, typically either 4x6 inches or 7x10 inches, encased in a wooden frame. A precise date range for writing slates of this type has not been established. Usually, a piece of cloth or slate sponge was used to clean it
Sort code issued to any organisation that will be a direct member of a UK electronic payment network (in addition to the cheque clearing systems, this includes BACS, Faster Payments and CHAPS). Non-standard sort codes are issued to payment service providers who need an IBAN, for example for SEPA, as the sort code forms part of this. The allocation of sort codes is managed by BACS. These numbers are six digits long, formatted into three pairs which are separated by hyphens. The following list shows the first two digits of the sort codes allocated to clearing banks. Thus, in the example 01-10-01,