80 NORFOLK BULLOCK FATTENING 



bottom is usually occupied by a strip of wet, rushy 

 pasture, often mere bog and showing a thin layer of 

 peat. The land water soaks readily through the 

 gravels and is held up by the impervious clay, so 

 that the floor of the valley becomes waterlogged and 

 develops peat. The chalky clay below is supposed 

 to have been ground up by the action of glacial ice : 

 it is yellowish in colour and by no means pure chalk ; 

 in the district it is known as " clunch," and is dug 

 out and moulded into blocks, out of which a good 

 many of the farm buildings are constructed. It 

 hardens considerably on exposure, and when protected 

 from drip and covered with a layer of whitewash the 

 " clunch " forms a serviceable and lasting building 

 material. Of course building stone is entirely lacking, 

 if we except the flints which can be so freely gathered 

 from the gravels, and as clay for brickmaking is 

 also not very common, the majority of the houses 

 and homesteads are built of rough flints set in mortar, 

 with brick or, more rarely, stone quoinings. Perhaps 

 it is in consequence of this lack of good materials that 

 the Norfolk farm buildings, in spite of the size of 

 the farms and the great importance attached to bullock 

 feeding, are comparatively poor ; both small and in 

 bad repair and generally designed in a very haphazard 

 and inconvenient fashion. On all the farms we visited 

 very much the same system of cropping was followed, 

 the differences depending mainly on the quality of the 

 land. As soon after harvest as possible the leys are 

 broken up for wheat, an early seeding for every crop 

 except roots being essential in this country of light 

 soils and minimal rainfall. One feature that immedi- 

 ately strikes a stranger to Norfolk is the custom of 

 ploughing round and round a field. The ploughman 

 either starts in the centre and strikes out a rectangle 



