HOUSES NEAR KING'S MILL, CAMBRIDGE 415 



lower slope to the river. Near the King's Mill the river bends 

 westward and the gravel spur extends eastward, so that the 

 higher ground approaches more closely to the river by King's 

 Mill Pool. 



Along the lanes or thoroughfares, transverse to the main 

 streets, which are now more or less represented by Silver Street, 

 Mill Lane, and Little St Mary's Lane, on either side of the 

 King's Ditch, houses thickly clustered. The ancient Colleges of 

 Peterhouse, Pembroke, St Benet's, St Catharine's, and Queens' 

 curve round and enclose it in unbroken sequence. In fact 

 there seems to have been here a small outlier of the town. 

 It grew up around the ancient mill, and probable facilities 

 which existed for crossing the river near the mill. But the 

 principal reason was that this site was on a patch of gravel cut 

 off by the King's Ditch from the end of the spur which runs 

 down from the end of the Fitzwilliam Museum to Queens' 

 College. 



The following section has recently been exposed in the 

 course of excavations for the alteration and extension of 

 Mr Foster's house in Mill Lane. 



Fig. 14. Section in Mill Lane. Scale 8' to 1". 



The section was as follows (fig. 14). The artificial floor (a) 

 sloped towards the river. A surface deposit (6) of gravel, old 

 mortar, and earth, indicated a recent raising of the ground on 

 which the floor was laid, by about 1 ft. 6 in. Below this came 

 (c) 4 ft. 6 in. of brown gravelly earth such as generally forms 

 the cultivated surface soil over the district. In this, at 5 ft. 

 from the surface, was (d) a layer of black earth full of organic 

 matter and apparently representing a stationary period in the 



272 



