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SOME NEW SECTIONS IN THE HESSLE GRAVELS. 
BY F. FIELDER WALTON, F.G.S. 
(Head June 8th, 1894.) 
Introductory. 
Some excavations recently made at Hessle have exposed several 
sections of considerable interest, especially to those geologists who 
are studying the glacial deposits of East Yorkshire. 
The sections uncover a series of gravel and sand in which 
mammalian bones are found ; this gravel is banked up against a very 
steep face of chalk, the whole being overlaid by a layer of boulder 
clay, which covers up both the chalk and the gravel, so that upon the 
surface there is no indication of the strata below. 
Before describing the new sections it would be well to mention 
what has been said about the Hessle gravels by previous writers. In 
the memoir of the Geological Survey these beds are placed and 
described among the interglacial beds of Holderness. By Professor 
Phillips they were thought to be pre-glacial and much older than the 
marine beds. Their exact place has not yet been satisfactorily 
determined except at a point a little to the North of Bridlington, 
where the buried cliff of chalk joins the present coast line. The 
deposits found banked against this cliff were here proved by Mr. 
Lamplugh to be pre-glacial. The Geological Memoir says : — " Leaving 
Bridlington the deposits banked against the old cliff are entirely 
unknown until we reach the Humber. Here, at Hessle, is the well- 
known gravel originally described by Professor Phillips, and con- 
sidered by him to be pre-glacial. The most striking feature of this 
neighbourhood is the steep slope of the chalk towards the Humber, 
forming what is commonly called Hessle Cliff ; though it is by no 
means vertical. On this lies irregularly the mammaliferous gravel, 
covered and overlapped by boulder clay." Then two sections are 
given, one just west of Hessle Station showing Purple Boulder CJay, 
10 feet ; below this bedded sand with chalk, looking very like an 
old run of the hill, with chalk at the base. The other, which is one 
hundred yards north and close to the line, shows about eight feet of 
