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summit of the hill, is a mass of rock, popularly known by the 

 name of the "Bambury Stone." Here Mr. Lees, Vice-President 

 of the Malvern Club, was requested to supply some information 

 on the subject, and proceeded to say that the interest of this 

 monument is both antiquarian and geological. He described 

 it as " a large and rugged honeycombed mass of Oolitic rock of 

 a roundish figure, with interstices filled to a considerable extent 

 with stalactitic incrustations ; being, in fact, broken up Oolite 

 reconstructed, and a relic of an old line of coast. This coast- 

 line had been rendered cavernous by wave-action ; and even so 

 late as 1712 the existence of a large cave, near the "Bambury 

 Stone," had been recorded by Dr. Derham, in his Physico- 

 Theology. The name, though corrupted, proved it to have been 

 one of those Ambre stones consecrated by the Druids to Celtic 

 superstition. In Cornwall, many similar stones bear the name 

 of Amhre. The late Mr. Jabez Allies, a Worcestershire 

 antiquary, had no doubt that this was truly a Druidical Amhre 

 stone ; and Mr. Lukis, of Guernsey, no mean authority on such 

 matters, was of the same opinion." 



The " Bambury Stone " is of a very remarkable conglomeratic 

 character, being composed of large angular masses of OoHte, 

 compacted in a calcareous paste. With the exception of one or 

 two smaller masses of the same roclc close to the Bambuiy 

 Stone, it is not again met with until it is found in two isolated 

 outHers of like character and composition, called the " King " 

 and " Queen," which occupy a similar position on the southern 

 slope of the hiU above Westmancote. These conglomerates — 

 so different in character from any other rock either there or 

 elsewhere in the district, and occupying as they do a position 

 on the denuded escarpment of the plateau — seem to admit of 

 but one interpretation, namely, that they owe their origin to 

 shore-ice during the Glacial epoch, to the grinding action of 

 which substance the hollowing out of the valley itself is probably 

 mainly due. The "Bambury Stone" and the "King" and 

 " Queen " are thus but the remains of a far larger extension of 

 the same deposit, which has in its turn yielded to denuding 

 influences, and left only these relics to shew what once has been. 



