ON LANDSLIPS. 315 



After passing through N'arroways Hill cutting^ the line 

 crosses the " Boiling Wells " Valley on a 50-ft. embankment, 

 over a flat, swampy ground, which, on trial, I found to be 

 made up of lias slip-clay, washed down there by the brook, 

 and some peat on top. This ground evidently could not 

 carry a heavy embankment, and it could not be drained. I 

 therefore, as a precautionar}'- measure, had a wide trench cut 

 down ten feet deep, under the toe of each slope, and the red 

 marl from the adjoining Narroways Hill cutting then rurt 

 into these trenches and the lower ten feet of the embankment 

 to form a foundation for the upper forty feet, which was, two 

 years later, tipped to the full height with lias clay, after the 

 base of red marl had become well consolidated.. We conse- 

 quently had no slip there, although it may be judged what 

 would have happened had these precautions not been taken, 

 by the result in the case of the Clifton Extension line, which, 

 a few years afterwards, was carried across the same valley 

 two hundred yards lower down, causing great landslips on 

 both sides. As also, in our case, we had to build a culvert 

 and heavy road-bridge in the middle of the bank, which such 

 slips would have utterly destroyed, the cure of the slips and 

 the reconstruction of the bridge and the culvert would have 

 been a very difficult matter, and might have involved the 

 outlay of a sum to be reckoned by tens of thousands of 

 pounds. 



After crossing this valley the railway cuts slightly into 

 the slope on the other side, where ^the Ashley Hill station 

 now stands, and where an old natural, but rather superficial, 

 landslip, at the back of the station building, gave a little 

 trouble when the line was doubled, twenty years later. 

 Above this station the railway again crosses the valley by 

 an embankment 52 feet in height. A four-foot culvert had 

 Urst to be put in under the deepest part of it to carry the 



