GEOLOGY 



from the Westleton shingle.' It is a subdivision that may be repre- 

 sented in the Crag Series at Easton Bavent and Southwold, and it may be 

 remarked that the pebble gravel at the northern end of Southwold cliff, 

 regarded by Prestwich as ' Westleton Beds,' ' is clearly a part of the Crag 

 Series, which probably extends over the whole of Southwold. We find, 

 in fact, re-arranged Chillesford Clay in the Middle Glacial sands at 

 Dunwich, shingle in the sands at Pakefield and Kirkley, reconstructed 

 Crag in the sands at Gorleston. 



As before mentioned, we find on the Chalk tracts in north-western 

 Suffolk much sand of no great thickness, as on Lakenheath Warren. It 

 is a region known as the ' Fieldings,' and noted as subject to sandstorms. 

 As long ago as 1668, Thomas Wright gave a brief description of the 

 devastation caused by the drifting of sand, but the trouble has been 

 exaggerated by subsequent writers owing to the title of Wright's paper, 

 ' A curious and exact Relation of a Sand-floud, which hath lately over- 

 whelmed a great tract of Land in the County of Suffolk.'^ He remarked 

 that previously the sand had been drifted by the south-west winds over 

 many acres of land, but that it had first reached the bounds of Downham 

 (known as Santon Downham or Downham Arenarum) some 30 or 40 years 

 prior to 1668, and eventually a number of meadows and pastures were 

 ruined by ' the extream Sandiness of the Soyl, the levity of which, I 

 believe, gave occasion to that Land-story of the Actions that use to be 

 brought in Norfolk for Grounds blown out of the Owners possession.' 

 Until improved by the application of marl this was no doubt the poorest 

 land in the county. 



The greatest thickness of sand and gravel (mostly sand) is 100 feet, 

 recorded at Market Weston near Bury St. Edmunds, in which district 

 the beds rest on Chalk. Coarse mixed gravel, often with lumps of Chalk, 

 occurs in places below, in, and above the Chalky Boulder Clay, and is 

 perhaps more intimately connected with the Boulder Clay than the mass 

 of the Middle Glacial sands and pebbly gravels. It may mark places 

 where the debris-laden ice was melted, and its constituents were distri- 

 buted by torrential streams. 



Thus gravel with boulders of limestone, sandstone and grit occurs 

 beneath Boulder Clay at Great Horringer ; coarse gravel is hkewise 

 found at Gallows Hill, south-east of Needham Market ; and a mass of 

 chalky gravel was observed in the Boulder Clay at Halesworth. Some 

 of the patches of gravel now seen on Boulder Clay may have occurred 

 originally in it before the surface had been lowered by denudation. 

 Coarse gravel with large flints occurs at Cockfield and Lavenham, and 

 gravel over Boulder Clay has been exposed to a depth of i 2 to 18 feet at 

 Tostock, Elmswell, Woolpit and Shelland ; a mass of it extends from 

 Great Waldingfield to Cornard Heath, Newton Green and Assington ; 

 it is met with also to the north and west of Lowestoft and Gunton, 

 north of Hopton and at Herringfleet Hall. Where the gravel occurs at 



' ^art. Journ. Geol. Soc. Ivi. 724 ; Proc. Geo/. Assoc, xvii. 453. 

 » Ibid, xxvii. 462. ' Phil. Trans, iii. (1668), 725. 



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