OF MARLBOROUGH. XV 



hill, Walker's Hill, and Martinsell, with here and there a 

 deep narrow bay with steep slopes leading down to it, and 

 which looks as if it had only just been left by the sea. 



The Chalk hills of this outer range and also those in the 

 interior of this district generally have much steeper slopes 

 on their western or north-western than on their eastern 

 sides. This may be especially noticed in Granham Hill, 

 which is very steep where it overlooks Clatford Bottom, but 

 has a gentle slope for two miles towards the east. 



Where the valleys run nearly north and south, the steep 

 slopes on their eastern sides are sometimes broken by ter- 

 races, one above another, as in the valleys of East Kennet 

 and Clatford Bottom, and in that which runs from the west 

 end of Marlborough through Barton Farm. 



On the northern side of the River Kennet the surface of 

 the country consists almost entirely of the Upper Chalk, 

 there being only a few outlying patches of red clay on the 

 tops of the hills. In a chalk-pit just to the east of Milden- 

 hall, the dip of the strata is towards the north-east. In 

 this pit there are sheets of flint about half an inch thick, 

 running in all directions between two parallel layers of 

 flint-nodules, and apparently connected with them. In the 

 wood to the north of this, below the surface-soil there occurs 

 a red stratified clay more than 12 feet thick, which also dips 

 towards the north-east. In sections on the opposite side 

 of the valley of the Kennet, of which there are several, the 

 strata are almost, if not quite, horizontal. About four miles 

 to the east of Marlborough, on the ridge on the south of the 

 Kennet, there is a vertical fault* running nearly north and 

 south. The western side is occupied by horizontal layers 

 of the Upper Chalk with flints, and the eastern by a red- 



* Faults are fissures in beds which were once continuous ; they are 

 generally accompanied by dislocations or slidings of one set of beds 

 over the other, so that what were continuous beds are left at different 

 levels. 



