78 
DEPOSITS OF THE LEEN VALLEY 
this gravel is very instructive, it does not tell us all we want to 
know, however. It contains only about one chapter as it were 
of the history of this ancient valley. Fortunately, a good oppor¬ 
tunity has at length been afforded of making a more complete 
examination of the alluvial and drift deposits of this valley. Some 
extensive excavations made recently in the narrow alluvial plain of 
the Leen, during the extension of the Nottingham Corporation Gas 
Works at Old Radford and at Basford, opened out a series of very 
instructive sections in the deposits that underlie this plain. The 
evidence revealed by these sections was found to throw a good deal of 
light on what had hitherto been a blank page in the geological history 
of the valley. 
Fig. 1. 
Section of the Alluvium of the Leen at Old Badford. 
,a) Yellow, bluish, and dark gray clay. 
(b) Peat, with upright steins of young trees. 
(c) White and gray “ sharp ” sand and gravel. 
(d) Brown gravel, with flakes of red hematite, and thin seams of red sand near 
the bottom. 
(hbb) Isolated small patches of peat. 
(e) Lower Mottled Sandstone (Trias). 
The first of these excavations was made by the west side of the 
Leen at Old Radford, in 1879-80, and was for a well for a new gas¬ 
holder. This well was something like 180ft. in diameter, and about 
40ft. deep. It passed through the whole of the deposits of the Leen 
that form the alluvial fiat, and far down into the Lower Mottled Sand¬ 
stone rock beneath. The Leen now wanders through a level meadow 
which varies in width from a few yards to a quarter of a mile. The 
excavation at Radford, however, revealed the fact that beneath the 
middle of this flat meadow lay a ravine, not very broad—probably not 
many yards—that is, supposing the part opened out in this cutting to 
be only half the entire width, and nine or ten feet deep, carved out of 
the solid rock (Fig. 1). This cavity was filled up by layers of gravel and 
sand, peat and clay, piled bed upon bed, while the Leen itself now flowed 
over all. At the bottom there was rusty-brown gravel, stained crimson 
here and there by bits and flakes of decomposing red earthy hematite 
which it contained. This hematite could have been derived from no 
other source in this district than the Coal Measures, probably of 
