26 
PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 
1915 
to sink ail 18-inch bore-hole close to the existing waterworks. It was 
purposed boring into the Upper Lias. At the time of the visit the bore-hole 
was 150 feet deep, having passed through the Forest Marble and Great 
Oolite, and penetrated 25 feet into the “Passage Beds.” Mr Richardson 
said that in the Kemble bore-hole,^ between the yellowish portions of the 
Great Oolite and the Inferior Oolite, were beds 12 1 feet thick characterised 
by a prevalent grey tint. The upper 48 feet he had denominated “ Passage 
Beds ’’ : the lower 73 feet included typical Fullers’ Earth. At the present 
time the bore-hole at Tetbury was about half way through these “ Passage 
Beds.’’ A massive core of very hard, light-grey stone between 146 feet 6 
inches and 153 feet down attracted particular attention. It was inquired if 
it were on the horizon of the Fullers’ Earth Rock of Somerset. Mr Richardson 
said he did not think so. He was of opinion that these “ Passage Beds ’’ — 
of which the massive bed was a portion — passed horizontally into the Stones- 
field-Slate series of the Cotteswold country to the north. The Fullers’ Earth 
Rock was characterised by an abundance of specimens of Ornithella ornitho- 
cephala, and the furthest point north at which he had noticed typical Fullers’ 
Earth Rock so characterised was at the head of the little combe east of Dyr- 
ham Wood and distant about a mile from Dyrham in a southerly direction.’ 
The core was carefully examined, and a 9-inch bed of “ Dagham Stone,’’ 
with its cavities filled with yellow ochreous material, was pointed out in the 
Great Oolite at loi feet 3 inches down. Attention was also drawn to the 
fact that there were numerous thin, more or less vertical, fissures in the Great 
Oolite limestone, filled with crystalline carbonate of lime (calcite). 
At the existing Waterworks is a brick-lined circular well, 9 feet 10 inches 
deep and 6 feet 9 inches in diameter, from the bottom of which is a 7-inch 
bore-hole 290 feet 2 inches deep. The top of the Inferior Oolite was reached 
at 252 feet down, so that this bore-hole leaves off 48 feet down in the Inferior 
Oolite.* On March 23rd, 1912, the water-level stood at 99 feet below the 
level of the engine-room floor, which is 447 feet above ordnance-datum. 
From the Waterworks the Members went to Veizey’s Quarry, which was 
opened to obtain stone for building Westonbirt House. On their way there 
they saw, cropping out in the lane joining the Tetbury Upton and Chavenage 
roads, a bed with a pitted surface, very similar to one between 51 feet 6 inches 
and 53 feet down in the bore-hole. Flere Mr Richardson made some remarks 
on the stone known as “ Dagham Stone.’’ He said that two beds of Dagham 
Stone, separated by two to four feet of limestone, are seen in the Aldgrove 
Cutting on the M. and S.W.J. Rly. to the south of Foss Cross Station.^ This 
stone is found over a large area in the Tetbury-Cirencester district. It has 
been considerably used for rustic rock or rockeries, and derives its name from 
Dagham or Daglingworth Downs to the north of Cirencester, where it forms the 
substratum of a large extent of (formerly) down-land. Several suggestions 
have been made as to the origin of the irregular holes in the stone. Thus 
Lycett attributed them “ to the forcible escape of gases from beneath while the 
stratum was of a soft or pasty consistence ’’ Prof. Allen Harker to the 
action of humic acid Edwin Witchell to calcareous matter being deposited 
“round soft substances which have been dissolved or otherwise removed, and 
through the labours of boring animals when the surface of the limestone was 
the floor of the sea’’ p and the late H. B. Woodward to the calcareous mud 
1 Proc. Cotteswold Nat. F.C., vol. xviii., pt. 2 (1913), pp. 185-189. 
2 Id., vol. xvii., pt. I (1910), p. 78. 
3 The well at the Tetbury Brewery, formerly Cooks, but purchased by the Stroud Brewery Co. 
Ltd., in 1913, is 90 feet deep, 6 feet in diameter, in rock all the way down, and “ stained ” for the 
first 12 feet. From the bottom of the well is a bore-hole 200 feet deep and 6 inches in diameter. 
During a test in 1914, 85,000 gallons per 24 hours were pumped continuously for three days. The 
water entered the well mainly through one noticeable fissure at the bottom. The Brewery is situated 
on the Forest Marble, the clays of which hold up the water in the Brewery pond. 
4 Proc. Geol. Assoc., vol. xxii. (1911), p. 107. 
5 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. iv., p. 185. 
6 Proc. Cotteswold Nat. F.C., vol. ix., p. 316. 
7 " Geology of Stroud,” p. 78. 
