FOREST MARBLE: FROME. 349 
The Forest Marble forms the high ground on which the town 
of Frome is built. The shelly limestones, which are of a durable 
nature, form an escarpment that extends from Innox Hill, by the 
railway-station, through the town, and westwards from Gibbet 
Hill towards Marstoa : thus forming a sort of amphitheatre, 
which overlooks the vale of Fuller's Earth clay and rock, &c. 
Both south and north of Phoenix Hall, Frome, the stone 
(locally called Frome Stone), lias been dug to depths of from 12 
to 15 feet or more: it consists of false-bedded oolitic limestone, 
with clayey and sandy layers. The stone, from a few inches to 
1 foot in thickness, is employed for building walls, for flagstone, 
&c. ; and many houses in Frome are built of it, for it stands the 
weather well. 
South of Frome Station we find, in a quarry and in the rail- 
way-cutting, about 20 feet of false-bedded oolitic and shelly lime- 
stone with clay-seams, overlaid by greenish clay and stone-beds ; 
and in the cutting south of Southfield Farm, shelly and oolitic 
limestone and the overlying clays are exposed, but no traces of 
Cornbrash were to be seen. East of Frome Station, the railway- 
cutting showed the tipper Forest Marble clays, with thin films of 
calcareous grit. 
Frome to Charterhouse Hinton. 
In the area between Frome and Bradford-on-Avon we find 
the most interesting development of the Forest Marble, including 
the fossiliferous beds at the base, known as the Bradford Clay, 
and also the sands and hard calcareous sandstones of Charterhouse 
Hinton and other places. 
So variable are the beds seen in different sections, that it 
is exceedingly difficult to correlate them and draw up a general 
table of sequence. This was attempted by Lonsdale, but the 
sections he gives in support of his subdivisions, tend to prove 
rather the variable character of the strata than any regular or 
persistent sequence. The following may be taken to be the 
general assemblage of beds : 
FT. IN. 
Cornbrash. 
f5. Clays with bands of false-bedded 
limestone - - - - 15 
4. Sands and concretionary masses of" 
calcareous sandstone (Hinton Sand- ^-30 
Forest Marble - 
stone) 
3. Shelly and oolitic limestone - - 12 
2. Clays and shelly limestones - - 20 
1. Clay with fossiliferous bed at base 
(Bradford Clay) - - - 10 
Great Oolite. 
The above table does not differ essentially from the succession 
given (about the year 1800) by William Smith,* nor from that 
more elaborately stated by Lonsdale.f The beds however are 
* Memoirs of W. Smith, by J. Phillips, p. 59. 
t Trans. Geol. Soc., ser. 2, vol. iii. p. 255. 
