ST. ALBANS AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. 
213 
connected with the lives of such eminent men as John Bunyan 
and Francis Bacon. 
III. GEOLOGY. 
More than three centuries ago, long before Geology became 
a science, John Nor den, in his ‘ Description of Hartfordshire ’ 
(1598), said that the soil of the county was “ for the most part 
chalkie, though the upper cruste in the south and west parts be 
for the most part of redde earth mixed with gravell, which yet 
by reason of the white marie under it yeeldeth good wheat and 
oates.” About a century later, Chauncy, in his ‘ Historical 
Antiquities of Hertfordshire’ (1700), copied and amplified the 
description of Norden. “ The upper cruste,” he said, “ in many 
places consists of red earth, mixt with gravel ; most of the 
meadows are dry ; the hills wet and cold, for they are clay, 
therefore barren ; and for divers parts it contains chalk within 
a foot or a fathom of the surface of the ground.” 
The neighbourhood of St. Albans furnishes an epitome of the 
geology of Hertfordshire. Wholly on the Chalk, which in 
“ divers parts ” comes near the surface of the ground, Tertiary 
beds overlie this formation in the south-east of our area, and, as 
an outlier on the north, cap the highest ground within the city 
boundary, forming the “ wet and cold ” clay hills of Chauncy ; 
there is much gravel in the immediate vicinity of St. Albans ; 
the “ red earth ” of our county historians is represented here and 
there by brick-earth and clay-with-flints ; and there is boulder- 
clay on the north, east, and south. 
It is unnecessary in this brief sketch of the geology of our 
district to say more about the Palaeozoic rocks which underlie 
the Chalk than that they are most probably Silurian, striking 
nearly east and west and dipping at a high angle to the south, 
having undergone great disturbance and denudation before the 
deposition of the Cretaceous beds, all formations between the 
two being absent. The Lower Greensand has probably thinned 
out to nothing in its trend from the north, but the Gault is 
certainly present, while there may possibly be a trace of the 
Upper Greensand, the Lower Chalk following. 
As the Chalk dips to the south-east, its lowest beds exposed 
are on the north-west, and these are Upper Chalk, probably at 
or near the top of the Micraster cor-testudinarium zone, most of 
the Chalk of our area being in the overlying Micraster cor- 
anguinum zone. A little beyond the area, at Markyate Street, 
there is, however, an interesting roadside section showing the 
junction of the Upper and Middle Chalk, the Chalk Bock being 
well shown and replete with its characteristic fossils. 
The Tertiaries consist of the Beading Beds and the London 
Clay, the Thanet Sands being absent. Only in the vicinity of 
Shenley and Badlett does the London Clay extend into our area 
from the south-east, the underlying Beading Beds forming as it 
were a fringe of varying width along its margin and occurring 
