68 MIDDLE ALBIAN STRATIGRAPHY 



(d) Aylesbury to Leighton Buzzard (Beds.) 



At the outcrop between Aylesbury and Leighton Buzzard, a distance of about 10 

 miles, there is very little information about the stratigraphy of the Gault except for 

 borehole records e.g. Jukes-Browne (1900). A brickyard at Littleworth (SP 881233), 

 Wing, Buckinghamshire, described by Jukes-Browne (1900 ; 278), Davies (1901 ; 140, 

 1915 ; 92) and Lamplugh (1922 ; 89-90), is now badly degraded, Lamplugh (1922 ; 40) 

 records Inoceramus concentricus from the ' 10 to 15 feet of shattery dark-blue 

 Gault . . . ' which was estimated to lie at about 10-12 feet (3-04-3-65 m.) above 

 the Gault basement bed. Specimens from the Lamplugh Collection are preserved 

 in the British Museum (Nat. Hist.) (BMNH L 59863-8) and indicate that these 

 sediments are of Middle Albian age. There is, therefore, over 27 feet (8-22 m.) of 

 Middle Albian sediments in this area resting upon a thin development of Shenley 

 Limestone which in turn rests upon Kimmeridge Clay. It is significant that Neo- 

 hibolites minimus is apparently plentiful here, in contrast to the Aylesbury area. 



In the short distance (1^ miles) between Littleworth and Southcott, Buckingham- 

 shire (SP 90052452), the Woburn (or Leighton) Sands intervenes below a similar 

 development of Shenley Limestone (Lamplugh 1922 ; 38). Moreover, the Shenley 

 Limestone lenticle forms the base of a 2 to 3 foot bed of loam with phosphatic nodules 

 below the Gault. These phosphatic nodule beds form an important feature at the 

 base of the Gault at Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, where they are essentially of 

 late tardefurcata and early mammillatum Zone age, with the eodentatus Subzone of 

 the Middle Albian at the top. The equivalent of the Lower Gault represents the 

 spathi, intermedins, and niobe Subzones. A description of the Albian sediments in 

 the Leighton Buzzard area is to be presented elsewhere, and at a later date, an account 

 of the Middle and Upper Albian sediments of East Anglia will also be given. This 

 region flanking the London platform and the North Sea area, although of considerable 

 stratigraphical interest, does not contribute any fundamentally new knowledge to the 

 ammonite zonal sequence of the Anglo-Paris Basin, the stabilization of which is the 

 main purpose of this paper. 



E. Borehole Evidence 



There are now a great number of deep boreholes in southern and eastern England 

 drilled principally in the search for water, oil and gas, and in Kent, for coal. To this 

 number can be added a few purely exploratory borings. These have provided a good 

 picture of the post Tertiary configuration of the Palaeozoic surface, and of the strati- 

 graphy of the Mesozoic sediments which have buried it (e.g. Kent 1949, Falcon & 

 Kent i960). It is now apparent that Albian sediments underlie the Chalk through- 

 out the area covered by that formation in England. In this work, the Wessex basin, 

 and the area of the London Basin, Essex, and East Kent only will be considered. 

 Borings in these areas have yielded important new information, including strong 

 indications of post Jurassic to basal Upper Albian faulting along part of the Thames 

 axes, certainly E. of London (Owen, in press) . 





