﻿1861.] 



DREW HASTINGS SAND. 



281 



and is again exposed in Chiddingstone Park. West of this, for a few 

 miles, the ontcrop of this part of the series is interrupted hy some 

 faults. At Stamford End, Edenbridge, rock-sand is again seen at 

 the horizon that I am speaking of : but this is about its last point ; 

 for further west the top of the Wells Sand is thin-bedded sandstone, 

 with some loam interstratified ; and of this same description is all 

 the upper half of this division. Taking the Tunbridge Wells Sand 

 as a whole, near the place it is named from, I find, on tracing it west, 

 that a bed of good stiff clay appears in it, and gets thicker and thicker 

 the further one goes in that direction. This clay, which I call 

 " Grinstead Clay," is first seen distinctly in Penshurst Park and in 

 the road- cutting that runs along the west side of it. Here I mea- 

 sured a thickness of 17 feet of clay, and I saw below it a bed of white 

 rock-sand ; while the Wadhurst Clay is not far beneath. Near 

 Tunbridge Wells itself there is here and there some red, rather loamy 

 clay, with thick-bedded sandstone beneath it ; and this I take to be 

 the same Grinstead Clay thinning out and occurring only in patches, 

 while I refer the lower bed of rock-sand that I, some way back, 

 said there was in the lower part of these sands, to the horizon of that 

 which underlies the "Grinstead Clay" at Penshurst. It will be. 

 remembered too that I mentioned a thin varying bed of clay, some of 

 it red, resting on a bed of rock-sand or thick sandstone, as occur- 

 ring about Cranbrook ; this is probably the equivalent of it too. 

 Following the same bed westward for some miles, I see little of it 

 on the north, on account of the faults ; but more to the south a suc- 

 cession of outliers enables us to get a good idea of it. North of 

 Hartfield it may be 20 ft. thick ; at the most easterly of some out- 

 liers that occur north of Forest Row it is 30 ft. ; at the next some- 

 what more than that is seen, though the top has been denuded ; 

 while at East Grinstead the thickness is probably 40 ft. ; and here 

 it is worth while to look more closely into its character. At the 

 very top of it there is red clay, which is a veiy useful mark by which 

 to recognize this stratum ; lower down it is brown clay, or brown 

 shale, or blue shale ; it everywhere makes very stiff ground, and it 

 ends sharply against the sand that is below. This sand, as at Red- 

 leaf, is either rock-sand or thick-bedded sandstone, in a mass of 30 

 feet or so thick. Sections of it may be seen in most of the lanes about 

 East Grinstead ; but it is also shown in natural sections at Ashurst 

 Wood Common, where it forms lines of rocks. In other places, too, 

 it juts out from the side of the hill, and a few miles to the south, at 

 a place near West Hoathly that bears the name of " The Rocks," it 

 makes two long lines of them — the edges of a projecting angle of 

 ground between two deep valleys, that rival in beauty those of Tun- 

 bridge Wells ; and indeed there is such a resemblance between this 

 and the groups at the last place, that almost every one would at first 

 say that they belonged to the same stratum — an error that would 

 probably be confirmed on the finding of a capping of clay to each set. 

 I have, however, no hesitation in saying that the two beds or their 

 equivalents are separated by a thickness of strata of more than 100 



