166 GEOLOGY OP THE ISLE OF WIGHT. 



20° on the south side of the road. The flexure is as sharp as 

 in Whitecliff' Bay. 



East o£ the Yar and Brading Harbour, the Limestone reappears 

 at two spots at the edofe of the marsh, and from Peacock Hill 

 eastward to WhitechfFBay it forms a marked ridge. 



At Osborne, the Limestone, which is lost under the Plateau 

 Gravel, ouglit to reappear in the upper part of the Pier Wood, 

 but the grounds are so well planted, and the features so obscured 

 by rainwash, that no trace of it is met with till King's Quay is 

 reached. Here, though the beds cannot be measured, part can 

 be seen on the foreshore, and fallen blocks are abundant. From 

 King's Quay to Wootton Creek and Binstead, there is no difficulty 

 in following the limestone-feature through the woods and tumbled 

 ground, but there are now no open sections, even at Binstead, for 

 the celebrated stone quarries are all worked out or abandoned. 

 The Binstead quarries are so celebrated that the following notes, 

 taken from the first edition of this Memoir, may be acceptable, 

 though the sections cannot now be examined. 



" In a quarry in the wood west of Binstead Church, and opening 

 to the sea, the upper part consists of thick-bedded, nodular, shelly 

 limestone, with Bulimus cllipticus, Limncea, Planoj^is (like rotun- 

 dutiis), Cyrena, or Cyclas, resting on soft sandstones, and hard, 

 calcareous, flaggy beds, sometimes well-laminated, and containing 

 teeth of An(q)lothcrmm, claws of Lobster, Pahidina orbicularis, 

 P. (small sp.), Limncea, and a small Planorhis. The upper jiart of 

 the quarry is made up of green marls, and an irregular surface of 

 Limnaean limestone, which is covered with from one to four feet 

 of ferruginous loam, almost free from flints. There are, however, 

 a few small scattered flints in the loam, generally in the lower 

 part, which is clayey, while in the upper half are lines of small 

 fragments of limestone, with an occasional pebble. Under the 

 rubbish, in the quarries between this and the road to Ryde, con- 

 cretionary shelly limestone rests on sandy beds, with layers of clay, 

 beneath which are four feet and a half of grey, flaggy sandstone, 

 forming the bottom of the quarry. The Binstead limestone was 

 formerly highly esteemed as a building stone, and has been used 

 in the construction of several churches in Sussex, the interior of 

 Winchester Cathedral, Lewes Priory, Yarmouth Castle and Quarr 

 Abbey (I. W.), an old Saxon ruin at Southampton, noticed by 

 Webster, he, &c."* 



In Ryde, according to Mr. Barrow, the Bembridge Limestone 

 was met with in laying down some drains in George Street. It 



* The quarries near Quarr Abbey were in estimation for many centuries. They 

 furnished some of the stone for building Winchester Cathedral, as appears by a grant 

 made by the Conqueror (and confirmed by William Rufus) to Eishop Walkelyue, 

 and by two precepts from Henry I. to Richard de Uedvers, Lord of the Island, for 

 stone to be dug there for the Cathedral at Winchester; ami subsequently to Stigand, 

 when he transferred his See from Selsey to Chichester. 'J'jie registers of Winchester 

 record that William of Wykcham used this stone in building the body of Winchester 

 Cathedral. 



