SUPERFICIAL DEPOSITS. 463 
paths. Some of the more remarkable accumulations occur north- 
west of Break Heart Hill, south of Dursley ; near Gravel Farm, 
south of Harescomb ; at Leckhampton Hill, where the rubble is 
seen to be banked up at angles of 30 to 40 ; and west of Syre- 
ford near Andoversford. 
Perhaps the most instructive sections are those on Bredon Hill 
(see Fig. 135), where the Inferior Oolite is shown to be broken up 
and irregularly weathered into a fine and coarse gravelly -looking 
rubble. This rubble at one part of the large quarry, was from 
25 to 40 feet deep (base not seen), and about 60 yards wide, with 
isolated masses and pinnacles of unweathered limestone. 
These accumulations of Oolitic detritus, that occupy various 
positions on the borders of the Cotteswold Hills, were considered 
by Strickland to be contemporary with the General (Glacial) 
Drift, and to have been formed along old sea-margins.* Such a 
view of their origin however is no longer entertained. Mr. W. C. 
Lucy, in 1869, expressed the view that the material was "attri- 
butable to frozen snow or land ice, which when the thaw set in, 
would slip down, carrying with it the detritus of the Freestone." 
Witchell showed that in places the rubble was intercalated with 
the rolled oolitic gravel of the river-valleys, and on these grounds 
he considered that it belonged to the latter part of the Glacial 
period. No indigenous fossils have been recorded from this 
" Angular Drift," but as the gravels at Stroud have yielded 
Pleistocene remains, WitcheU's conclusion is justified. In his 
opinion some of this Drift was " due to storm waters or surface 
drainage, which brought the detritus down the hill upon a frozen 
surface, and deposited it in those places where the frost usually 
disappeared in spring before it left the higher ground."! 
Distinct evidence of Glacial Drift is found only to the north 
of the Cotteswold Hills, and in the Vale of Moreton on their 
eastern side. 
The Oolitic region from Chipping Norton to Banbury is prac- 
tically free from Drift ; but further east and south-east in the 
area north-east of Brackley, Buckingham, and Aylesbury, away 
to Lincolnshire, the Oolites are in many places concealed by 
coverings of Boulder Clay and Drift Gravel. 
At Tingewick and Radcliff near Buckingham there are good sections in 
the Drifts, which in places are seen to a depth of over 40 feet ; "being 
mainly gravel and sand, and coarse boulder gravel, with occasional layers 
of Boulder Clay. Similar beds occur at Stoke Plain, north of Stoke 
Bruerne, and east of Towcester. 
Chalky Boulder Clay occurs over much of the surface in Whirtlewood 
Forest, it is found near Newport Pagnell, Towcester, Eoade, Blisworth, 
Northampton, Buckingham Forest, and onwards in patches through Lin- 
colnshire. Considerable thicknesses of this Boulder Clay were opened 
up in some of the railway-cuttings near South Witham, Castle By t ham 
{see p. 422), and between Essendine and Great Ponton. 
* Memoirs, pp. 92, 103 ; see also Hull, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xi. p. 477. 
t Proc. Cotteswold Club, vol. vi. p. 1 50 ; G. F. Playne, Ibid., vol. v. p. 23 ; \Y~. 
C. Lucy, Ibid., vol. v. p. 71, vol. Tii., p. 50 ; Prestwich, Quart. Journ. Geol. Sec., 
vol. xlviii. pp. 314, &c. 
