VOL. XVI (2) EXCURSION—CHIPPING CAMPDEN 121 
Mr Richardson would not be leaving Cheltenham, as they had been 
afraid he would, but having accepted the appointment of Director of 
the Cheltenham School of Science and Technology, he would be 
able to continue his valuable services to the Club. The expression of 
thanks having been cordially ratified by all present, Mr Richardson 
acknowledged the same, and also favoured the company with some 
facts respecting the geology of this locality... [W.T.] 
The Geology of the District is very simple. The Moreton 
Valley on the east and the Vale of Evesham on the west are 
floored with the Lower Lias, over which—in comparatively late 
geological times—deposits of sand and gravel have been made. The 
hills about Chipping Campden are based upon the Lower Lias. The 
lower division of the Middle Lias consists of sandy shales, and as 
might be expected from the fact that they are relatively porous, and 
the Lower Lias clays impervious, springs and marshy ground indicate 
their base, which is usually at the foot of the hills. The upper 
division of the Middle Lias is the Marlstone, and it is this bed that 
forms the flat top of Meon Hill, and constitutes the platform—furrowed 
into many a tabulated promontory—that surrounds, so to speak, 
Ebrington Hill. The Upper Lias succeeds the Middle, and constitutes 
the gentle slope that leads from the Marlstone terrace to the steep 
scarp of Inferior-Oolite rocks. In the neighbourhood of Chipping 
Campden the Lower Lias is of great thickness, for a boring in 
Mickleton Wood proved 961 feet before it entered the underlying 
Rhetic Beds. Another at Burford Signett proved 447 feet 4 inches, 
so that along the line of the Moreton Valley it is probable that 
the Lower Lias is much thinner than beneath Mickleton. Mr 
Richardson said that he had seen no details concerning the boring for 
coal that had been put down near Moreton-in Marsh. The Moreton 
Valley, however, is known to indicate a line of weakness along which 
movements of upheaval have taken place time after time. The 
characters and distribution of the Middle and Upper Lias, of the 
Inferior-Oolite, and, to a less extent, of the Great Oolite, demonstrate 
this. Repeated movements, causing sometimes thinning out of beds 
in the direction of the axis, and sometimes removal after deposition, 
have never allowed so great a thickness of these formations to be 
deposited as might otherwise have been. But the fact that the beds 
of later date than the Lower Lias which occur in the hills flanking the 
Vale suggest that the Lower Lias might likewise be comparatively 
thin, do not guarantee the presence of coal at a lesser depth from the 
surface than has usually been held. For, granted that the Moreton 
Valley marks out a line of weakness, and that removals of deposits 
from off the top of the anticline have been frequent in early Jurassic 
times, is it not equally probable that the line of weakness might have 
been developed during the Hercynian period of earth-crumblings 
(that is, after the time of formation of the ‘‘ older” Coal Measures, 
1 See also pages 129-134. 
