On the Geology of Cirencester Town, and a recent discovery of the 
Oxford Clay in a deep well boring at the Water Works. By 
Auten Harker, Professor of Natural History at the Royal 
Agricultural College. Read 24th February, 1891. 
The town of Cirencester, looked at from the physical 
geographer’s point of view, is situated on the gently sloping 
floor of an expansion of the Churn valley, which here widens 
out into a long irregular spindle shape, bending near its centre 
towards the South-West. The pre-historic course of the river 
through this plain can now only be guessed at. Its old bed is 
probably hidden beneath the ruins of the many cities that have 
stood here since paleolithic man hunted the mammoth through 
the reeds and osiers by its banks, and left his rude flint imple- 
ments on the slopes at Trewsbury, or the tusks of his game in 
the gravels of the stream by Siddington and South Cerney. 
The river has been diverted, certainly many times, to suit 
the exigencies of former inhabitants—Celts, Romans, Romano- 
British or Saxons, and has finally been treated in a character- 
istically modern fashion, and covered out of sight for a great 
part of its course. It is only by laborious reference to old maps 
and histories, and to the memory of “the oldest inhabitant,” 
that one can follow the underground branches and their devi- 
ations, though they are of great interest and importance in a 
study of the water supply. 
All around this expanded valley floor (on which the town 
is built), except at the entrance and exit of the stream, which 
are comparatively narrow, the ground rises by more or less 
gradual and gentle slopes to the higher downs on the North 
and West, and the more gentle undulations to the South and 
Kast. 
A 6in. ordnance survey map, with the contours marked, 
and the rising grounds around the town coloured, leaves the 
