214 
ST. ALBANS AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. 
also as outliers in various localities—near tlie main mass, at 
Abbot’s Langley, at Bedmond, at Lever stock Grreen, and in 
St. Albans itself, St. Peter’s Church and Bernard’s Heath being 
situated upon one of the outliers which is a mile and a half in 
length and nearly half a mile in width. These beds consist of 
a very variable series of sands, mottled clays, and pebble-beds, 
which must at one time, with the overlying London Clay, have 
entirely covered our district, outliers far to the north and west 
testifying to the former presence of the main mass. 
At St. Albans and near Badlett the principal pebble-bed of 
the Beading Series is consolidated by a siliceous cement into 
a conglomerate, well known as the Hertfordshire Conglomerate 
or “ plum-pudding stone.” It also occurs in the county, 
evidently in position, in at least two localities outside our area 
(North Mimms and Bushey). At St. Albans, in the gravel-pits 
on Townsend Farm, it has been traced for about 20 feet in 
one direction and 5 feet in another at right angles, lying in 
a horizontal position under gravel and with sand beneath it, but 
somewhat disturbed and broken up into blocks. In Newberries 
Park, Badlett, it is more clearly seen to be in position near the 
base of the Beading Beds, having beneath it a stratum of black- 
coated pebbles intermingled with sand and clay, and fine white 
sand above it. Masses of this conglomerate, usually called 
boulders on the assumption that they have been carried for some 
distance by ice or water, are of frequent occurrence, one of the 
largest known having been taken out of the Yer at St. Michael’s 
and set up on the green opposite Kingsbury. 
Another rock from the Beading Beds is known as Sarsen 
Stone. It is an aggregation of sand forming a hard sandstone, 
often with a mamillated surface. Boulders of it frequently 
occur, and good examples may be seen at the County Museum, 
on either side of the path near the entrance, one having been 
brought from the corner of Dagnall Street and Market Place, 
St. Albans, where it probably formed an old landmark, and the 
other from the Long Valley Wood gravel-pits, Croxley, near 
Bickmansworth, where it and others were found in a “ pipe ” 
of the Beading Beds. 
The Beading Beds have been largely worked for brick-making 
on Bernard’s Heath, St. Albans, and at the Bennett’s End brick¬ 
fields near Leverstock Grreen, but it is chiefly brick-earth which 
is now worked there. 
When these Tertiary beds were laid down the Chalk was in the 
horizontal position in which it was deposited, the very slight 
curvature forming the London Basin and giving to the Chalk 
and Tertiaries at St. Albans a slight dip towards the south-east 
having probably taken place in Miocene times during a period of 
volcanic activity in North Britain. A long interval then elapsed 
during which no deposits were formed in our district, but rivers 
were doing their work in excavating our valleys, a work much of 
which was obliterated by the ice-sheet which spread over the 
