THE MIDDLE LIAS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 
253 
supply being unsatisfactory, the bore bole was plugged and an 
adit was made to the adjacent brook, perhaps some 50ft. lower 
than the surface of the well, the old well being used as a 
reservoir. The water-bearing rock is 119ft. above sea level, 
that is, 44ft. higher than at Northampton, but only 12ft. 
higher than at the Spinney Well. The well is now silted up 
to within 70ft. or 80ft. of the surface, hence I could obtain no 
information as to whether the Marlstone water had increased 
during the last two years. 
The Well at Berry Wood Asylum. A description of this 
well was given on page 235, so it will suffice here to record 
some recent observations. In 1885 there was a small supply 
of water, and special precautions were taken to prevent waste; 
nevertheless, the water sank till there was only 3ft. in the 
well. This year (1887) more water has been used necessarily 
than in 1885, no particular care has been exercised to prevent 
waste, and yet the lowest ascertained depth of water was 
6ft. Sin. We should be well within the mark, I think, if we 
assumed that the water supply here had been doubled within 
the last two years. Berry Wood Asylum is about 3J miles 
W.N.W. of the Northampton well. 
The particulars concerning these wells show— 
1. That the old wells yielded abundance of water when first 
made , but the amount continuously declined till 1885, the time of 
yreatest depression at Northampton. 
2. The newer wells , even when first made , never yielded much 
water, and one—the Spinney Well—none at all. 
3. Coincident!)/ with a rise of the water-level at Northampton, 
a, rise has taken place some miles away. 
There is only one way of accounting for the increase of 
water at Berry Wood, and it is not agricultural drainage that 
we have to look to; in fact, this latter, as a cause affecting 
water supply, must take quite a secondary place. 
Altogether it appears that the head-level of the Maidstone 
water within the Northampton district has sunk 150ft. to 
200ft. within the last fifty years. 
Some wells south of the Nen Valley have also been 
referred to, for instance, Brackley and Milton. These have 
a similar tale to tell—the water level has been gradually 
declining, though, as Mr. Sharpe points out with regard to 
Brackley, the decline is not so great. Mr. Sharp does not 
appear to have considered the great Nen “ fault,” or he would 
have probably seen that the results observed are consistent 
with, and only to be explained by, the draining of the northern 
Maidstone area by Northampton. The lowering of the water- 
