BEDFORDSHIRE. 



895 



Bedio.-d- regular layers in the clay, as to have been called strata 

 shire. f f}| Ilt) a , lc j j lk . n J,, sllc ]] quantities, as after rain 

 " "^ to cause the ploughed fields to appear like gravel 

 heaps. On others of the hills of this district, particu- 

 larly near Kingsworth, great quantities of the small 

 black chert pebbles of the London clay are found, 

 (See Phil. Mag. vol. xxxv. p. 131.) with broken 

 flints and larger chert pebbles in the vallies. 



The strata of Bedfordshire have an easy and pretty 

 regular dip towards the south-east, at the rates of 1 in 

 50 to 1 in 80 perhaps. The uppermost stratum which 

 appears in Bedfordshire, is a thick bed of chalk, 

 with numerous layers of flints throughout its whole 

 thickness; but near the top they are closer together, 

 and the nodules larger, and the intervening chalk in 

 this situation is more free or soft, and is alone fit for 

 the chalking of lands and the making of whitening, 

 on account of its friability : it is also the purest car- 

 bonate, and contains less siiex and other heterogeneous 

 mixtures, than the lower chalks do. This upper 

 chalk advances no farther northward or north-west 

 than the hills on eacli side of Luton, and those south- 

 cast, south-west, and west, of Dunstable. 



The hard or lower chalk next succeeds, in which 

 :io flints are found ; but the chalk increases in hard- 



:., and the quantity of the fine grains of silex 

 which it contains, as we proceed downwards, until 

 near its bottom a stratum little different in appear- 

 ance from those above it is found, which proves to 

 be a very durable freestone, when seasoned or dried 

 gradually without suffering frost to reach it, which, 

 when fresh dug, would otherwise shiver it completely 

 to pieces. At Totternhoe, north-west of Dunstable, 

 there are immense and ancient workings after this 

 stone, which will stand lire, as well as weather, in a 

 vertical wall. Woburn-Abbey, the New Swan Inn 

 at Bedford, and many other good buildings, are faced 

 with this stone ; and the window-jambs and ornaments 

 of most of the churches in the midland counties are 

 made of it. The hard beds of chalk above this Tot- 

 ternhoe stone, such as are seen in the second new road 

 now cutting at Chalk, or Puddle-hill, near Dunstable, 

 are called hurlock, and make a very good lime for 

 building, probably on account of the great quantity 

 of silex it contains ; and it is from these hurlock beds, 

 all the way from near Eaton-Bray to Baldock, that 

 the parts north of this for several miles are furnished 

 with lime, except a little for plasterers work or 

 white-washing, which is brought frcyn the softer and 



.iter beds of the upper chalk, to the south of the 

 range made by the hard chalk and hurlock. The large 

 quantity of silex, which some of thia hurlock con- 

 tains, may be one reason, joined with the clearness of 

 fuel to bum it, that lime "has been so little used or 

 even tried of late years, on the clays or sands north 

 of the chalk hills in Bedfordshire, under the idea of 

 its not repaying the expense. The upper and lower 

 chalk are, it is said, together about 400 feet thick. 



The chalk marie is the stratum which succeeds the 

 chalk, and on the surface when wet, makes very te- 

 nacious white or gray clayey soil ; but when dry, the 

 white colour is seldom preserved, yet a dark-coloured 

 loam results from its decomposition, although when 

 fresh dug into, the strata might almost be mistaken for 

 rubblcy or broken hurlock. The basset, or north- 



western edge of this stratum, was lately exposed by 

 the widening the London road through Kates-hill, 

 at the south end of Hockliff town. 



In proceeding from this northward, along the road 

 towards Towceter, nothing but thick masses of allu- 

 vial clay are seen, until near Sand-house at 40| 

 miles from London ; and in the other road through' 

 Woburn, the same alluvial covering prevents any ob- 

 servations being made on the strata, until within a quar- 

 ter of a mile of Woburn town the same sand makes its 

 appearance, from under the alluvium : and it is not 

 a little remarkable, that the distribution of this allu- 

 vial clay is so complete across the country, all the 

 way from Billington to Cockayne-Hatley, as shewn 

 by the blue colour in Mr Batchelor's map above refer- 

 red to, as entirely to conceal from the knowledge and 

 use of the inhabitants of Bedfordshire, the remarkable 

 limestone strata of Aylesbury, and several others, 

 which no where burst through or shew themselves 

 from under the alluvia, the " golt" of the Rev. Mr 

 Michell. See the Phil. Mag. vol. xxxvi. page 103". 



The Woburn sand is a name for a series of ferru- 

 ginous sand strata, about 170 or 180 feet thick, 

 whose basset crosses Bedfordshire from Leighton- 

 Busard to Potton, as already mentioned, when speak- 

 ing of the alluvium and peat upon it. In most parts 

 this sand near the surface is cemented by an oxide of 

 iron, into a dark red sand-stone, the grains of silex 

 in which are of very unequal sizes, even in the same 

 specimen. This stone is called car-stohe in some places, 

 and was for many years, previous to the roads in Wo- 

 burn being undertaken by the late Duke's agent, the 

 sole material used on the roads ; and the grinding of it, 

 and subsequent washing away of the ferruginous ce- 

 menting matter by the rains, occasioned two-thirds 

 in length of those deep, loose sandy roads, (which 

 were the remark and terror of travellers who valued 

 their horses, under the name of the Woburn Sands,) 

 across tracts of alluvial clay, where not the least 

 sand is to be found but what has been brought 

 thither, when in the form of car or sand-stone. It 

 is much to be lamented, that this absurd practice still 

 continues in the parishes of Wavendon and Brougb- 

 ton, between Woburn and Newport Pagnel, instead 

 of searching for and clean sifting the quartz and flint 

 gravej, which is to be had in sufficient plenty. 



The most remarkable feature of the Woburn-sand 

 strata, are the beds of fullers-earth which they pro- 

 duce near the bottom. It is believed, that in what- 

 ever part of the basset of this sand across England 

 a 6earch is made, the fullers-earth will be found, 

 but generally in thin and fo"ul beds, of no value, and 

 also the silicious or chertystone of a peculiar nature 

 and fracture which lies beneath it, a. id the specimens 

 of petrified wood which also abound in the same si- 

 tuation ; but over several hundred acres at the least, 

 on the north-west of Woburn, both in Aspley-Guise 

 parish in Bedfordshire, and in Wavendon in Bucking- 

 hamshire, this substance is found from live to seven or 

 eight feet thick, between the beds of sand or sand- 

 stone, perfectly free from any extraneous matter. The 

 original and most extensive workings, which seem of 

 great antiquity, were on Aspley Common Heath, 

 and in Aspley Wood in the same parish; and hence 

 it was truly said, that these celebrated pits Were in 



Bedford- 

 shire. 

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