32 PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 1907 
Fifty years after the battle of Burford, a battle which had far- 
reaching political consequences took place at or near Kempsford, 
a village on the left bank of the Thames. The death of Beorhtic, King 
of Wessex, in 802, left the Kingdom open to Ecgbert, who had 
been banished during his youth through the enmity of Offa. By none 
was his accession more violently opposed than by the men of the 
Hwiccian Kingdom. Gathering his forces together, Ethelmund, 
Ealdorman of the Hwiccas, crossed the Thames at Kempsford, and 
met Ealdorman Weohstan, with the West-Saxons, and there was, 
in the words of the Chronicle, ‘‘a muckle fight,” in which both 
Ealdormen were slain, and the West-Saxons won the day. In 823 
Ecgbert gained a great victory over the Mercians at Ellandune [pro- 
bably Wroughton, on the Wiltshire Downs], and for the first time 
since the treaty of Cirencester, nearly two hundred years before, 
Mercia had to acknowledge the superior power of Wessex. Other 
conquests and absorptions followed, and in 827 the Hwiccian folk saw 
Ecgbert, one of their own kith and kin, first King of the English 
people. [J-S.] 
After lunch the Members drove to Shipton Station. On the way 
a large quarry (Grove’s Quarry) in the Great Oolite was visited. From 
the hill above the quarry, Mr Richardson pointed out where the 
Forest Marble occurred, and as the beds came comparatively close to 
the edge of the quarry, and the Inferior-Oolite rocks had been exposed 
formerly further down the road in the direction of Little Milton, 
it followed that in the quarry they had nearly the whole of the Great 
Oolite proper. At Bath, these beds are massive strata: here 
clay-beds are intercalated. 
In order to contrast the gravel-deposits of the Vales of Moreton 
and Bourton, a pit at Little Milton was visited, and the constituents of 
the deposit were seen to be such as had come from a distance. 
GRAVEL PIT AT LITTLE MILTON 
Thickness in 
Feet inches 
1. Gravel of “ Northern-Drift” pebbles, and a few 
of Oolite, in a reddish-brown oolitic loam ; 
seen 7 6 
2. Sand, reddish-brown, with a few Oolite, but 
principally “ Northern-Drift” pebbles I fo) 
3. Greenish-brown clayey deposit, with derived 
oolite-granules, fragments of oolite, and a _ 
few “ Northern-Drift ” pebbles : seen 3 6 
Another pit farther on showed that the sand had a considerable 
geographical extent at this southern end of the Moreton Valley. 
