PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 
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116 
elevations at which the Avon Valley deposits occur, since they 
fall with the gradient of the river from the assumed position 
of the ice at about 380 feet O.D. below Rugby to 140 feet at 
Beckford and 33 feet at its junction with the Severn. From 
the nature of the Drift constituents in deposits at the New Inn, 
on the Ridgew r ay, 430 feet O.D., Dunnington 280 feet, Church 
Lench 355 feet, and Cracombe Hill 370 feet O.D., it appears 
probable that they were partly derived from the northern 
ice-sheets. The fact that no fragments of marine shells have 
been found in the Avon Valley above the confluence of the 
Arrow r points to the conclusion that the few discovered w r ere 
transported by w'ater flowing from the Irish Sea ice that 
extended to the east and south of Birmingham, over the 
watershed of the rivers Blythe, Alne and Arrow. The latter 
now joins the Avon about two miles below Berry’s Coppice, 
Dunnington, where a shell identified by Etheridge as Cyprina 
islandica w r as found. 
I have suggested ( 69 , p. 83) that the Avon formerly flowed 
from near Evesham to the south of the Bredon outlier, and 
continued its course between the Cotteswolds and a ridge, 
portions of which still border the Severn between Worcester 
and Gloucester, to a junction with that river below Wainlode 
(see Buckman, 25 , p. 218). Flinty gravels and sands at 
Alderton, Little Washbourne, Beckford, and Kemerton 
plainly indicate one part of this old channel, w'hich may have 
been only a temporary deflection during the Glacial Epoch. 
The greater part of the gravels and sands on the Stour- 
Evenlode watershed and valleys and the Avon Valley are of 
Glacial age, but some have, no doubt, been much modified. 
VII. The Low t er Severn Valley. 
Gravels and sands consisting of morainic Drift and the debris 
of local and other rocks (Classes A, C and D) w r ere deposited 
during the Glacial Epoch in and near to the present channel of 
the Severn. They w T ere probably laid dowm in sheets varying in 
breadth as the river encroached upon or receded from the high 
ground that in places borders it on either side. The proximity 
