22 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF LEICESTER AND DISTRICT 
blue shales. These beds of the lower series have been quarried at 
Barrow-on-Soar, yielding many large fossil reptilian remains of 
Plesiosaurus macrocephalus Owen, Ichthyosaurus communis Conybeare, 
I. tenuorostris Conybeare, as well as numerous fossil fish. Many of these 
specimens can be seen in the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery. 
At Kilby Bridge, south of Leicester, similar beds have been worked 
until recently, but at both quarries work has now ceased on account of 
the great thickness of useless overburden of glacial drift which first had 
to be removed. 
In the upper part of the Lower Lias, blue clays and shales of considerable 
thickness occur. These upper beds are only exposed along a narrow 
tract of country below the Middle Lias escarpment, and along the numerous 
small streams which flow westwards into the Soar. 
In the clay pit at Glen Parva brickyard, the base of the Lias is seen 
resting on the Rheetic Shales. 
The Middle Lias outcrop traverses the county from near Harstone 
on the north-east border, south-westerly through Eastwell and Holwell 
to Old Dalby, thence eastwards to Sproxton, southwards to Wymondham 
and then in an irregular outcrop through Burrough Hill, Tilton, Billesdon, 
Goadby and Hallaton, to the near neighbourhood of Market Harborough 
in the south-east. Following a series of sinuous curves, its outcrop, 
where free from drift, forms a marked topographical feature or escarpment, 
with outliers which have been denuded from the main outcrop, as at 
Gumley, Foxton, Stonton Wyville, and Great Bowden in the southern 
part of the county. 
The Middle Lias comprises two important divisions,—the rock-bed 
consisting of Marlstone and the shales below the rock-bed. 
In the north-eastern area the Middle Lias forms a prominent and 
unbroken escarpment, stretching from Belvoir Castle to the neighbourhood 
of Old Dalby. ‘The Marlstone forms the protective capping to this 
escarpment whose highest point (569 ft.) is reached at Broughton Hill, 
near Wartnaby. Around Belvoir Castle the country is well wooded 
and very picturesque, the escarpment offering a number of very fine 
view-points in the area. The ridge itself is divided into three large 
outcrops by a great sheet of boulder-clay which overlaps its southern 
edge and extends down the scarp slope for some distance on to the Lower 
Lias below, forming gaps at the head of which are the villages of Eastwell 
and Scalford. 
In the neighbourhood of Tilton, the Middle Lias attains its greatest 
thickness and forms a series of bold escarpment features. ‘These bold 
features can be seen wherever the rock-bed is free of drift, as at Life 
Hill (727 ft.). Billesdon Coplow marks the most westerly outcrop of 
the rock-bed, and is underlain over a rather more extensive outcrop by 
the underlying sandy shales, and rises to an elevation of 7oo ft. On 
account of the thinning of the rock-bed southwards the Marlstone iron- 
stone has not been extensively worked for iron ore south of Tilton, though 
recently much increased activity has been apparent at Tilton on account of 
economic conditions enabling local iron ore to be again profitably worked. 
The rock-bed of Marlstone ironstone quarried at Tilton by the 
