A HISTORY OF WARWICKSHIRE 



deposits. The former occupy the Lias plateau south of Rugby, and at 

 various localities appear to consist of 10 to 20 feet of gravel and sand 

 with beds of stony clay. From Rugby to Lowmorton the surface 

 deposits consist of about 13 feet of gravel lying on clayey sand, and a 

 cutting on the London and North- Western railway showed a few feet of 

 gravel and sand overlying stony clay chiefly derived from the Lias, and 

 containing well striated pieces of Lias limestone, chalk and flint. In 

 and about Rugby gravel and sand are exposed in various pits. 



At Exhall, north of Coventry, a deposit of clay and sand up to 75 

 feet thick has been described by Mr. A. Startin l as extending in a 

 narrow band southwards from Griff to Foleshill ; boulders of igneous 

 rocks and sandstone occur at the bottom of the mass. To the west of 

 this the surface soil contains much angular de'bris derived from the 

 Hartshill Quartzite of Nuneaton. West of the high ' Permian ' ground 

 of Corley rounded quartzose (Bunter) pebbles become common, while 

 on the other hand about Bulkington and Wolvey, Liassic fossils are to be 

 found. Here again we have evidence of one movement from the north 

 and another from the north-east or east. 



In addition to these spreads of gravel, sand and boulder clay which 

 occur irregularly over the surface of the county, we occasionally come 

 across large and conspicuous blocks of rock which have evidently travelled 

 far from their parent beds. The larger of these ' boulders ' have always 

 attracted notice. Few however seem to have been recorded in War- 

 wickshire. Several of granite and felstone occur on the western confines 

 north of Birmingham, and have been noted by the Rev. J. Caswell 2 of 

 Oscott College ; and at Stockton, some few miles east of Warwick, a 

 Charnwood granite boulder nearly 2 tons in mass and measuring 4 feet 

 across has been enclosed and inscribed. 3 Mr. W. J. Harrison has noted 

 two boulders in the village of Sherbourn south of Warwick ; one is a 

 mass of Millstone Grit 29 inches across, the other of granite, 38 inches; 

 while the same observer has recorded a small boulder of quartzose 

 material at Exhall several miles west of Stratford-on-Avon.* 



Certain small tracts of drift in the north of the county fall within 

 the area of the Atherstone sheet B of the Geological Survey map, and 

 have been mapped and described by Mr. C. Fox-Strangways. There 

 are gravel patches at Warton and Shuttington composed of pebbles 

 without any admixture of eastern rocks ; they seem to have been derived 

 chiefly from the Bunter pebble beds. Boulder clay, somewhat of the 

 nature of brickearth and containing sandy and loamy bands, extends 

 southwards from Market Bosworth towards Hinckley, just beyond the 

 north-eastern edge of the county, and at the last named town it is stated 



1 Proc. Warw. field Club (1866), p. 26. 

 * Rep. Brit. Assoc. for 1877 (pub. 1878), pp. 82, 83. 

 3 Rev. W. Tuckwell, Rep. Brit. Assoc. for 1886 (pub. 1887), p. 627. 

 1 Rep. Brit. Anoc. for 1890 (pub. 1891), p. 340. 



'New series, sheet 155, showing Drift, by C. Fox-Strangways (1899) ; see also the accompanying 

 Memoir, p. 37 et seqq. 



36 



