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Field Meeting at Netley Heath and Albury, Surrey
43 2
FIELD MEETING AT NETLEY HEATH AND ALBURY. SURREY. SATURDAY, 12TH MAY, 1934. Report by the Director, G. M. DAVIES, M.Sc., F.G.S. STARTING from Gomshall Station about 11.40 a.m., the members walked northward up Colekitchen Lane and noted the high banks cut through the Upper Greensand. Just above this point they turned left and took a footpath up the Chalk escarpment. Here they looked back to the dip-slope of the Lower Greensand, whence came the chert that occurs in many of the high-level gravels of Surrey and Hertfordshire. The path then led northward through the woods over gravelly clay-with-flints to Netley Heath, and terminated by a sarsen at an angle in the road from East Horsley to Shere (B.M. 616). It was in shallow workings to the north of this point, now disused, that casts of fragments of fossils had been found from time to time. These had been shown by Mr. C. P. Chatwin to differ markedly from the Lenham fauna, the commonest species, Corbulomya complanata, being limited to the Red Crag in East Anglia and to the Scaldisian and Poederlian in Holland and Belgium. The Director pointed out the close similarity in mineral composition and in position that linked the sands of Netley Heath with those of Ranmore Common, Headley Heath, Chipstead and Sanderstead in Surrey, Lenham to Folkestone in Kent, and Little Heath and other localities on the Chiltern dipslope. The sands here are in part overlain by, and even mingled with, gravel and clay-with-flints, and the whole is disturbed by solution of the Chalk or by deep freezing and partial thawing in Glacial times. The Geological Survey have marked the whole of these varied deposits by one colour, under the name of the Netley Heath Deposits, to which they assign a Pleistocene age. Petrological examination enables one to distinguish between the marine Pliocene sands and shingle, containing minerals newly arrived from some distant but unknown source, and the local gravel and clay-with-flints. The road was followed north-eastward to Rails Hatch, where a pit on the right, just above the 500 feet contour, exposed Pliocene sand and coarse shingle. One part of the pit showed unworn flints with their longer axes vertical, and some manganese staining, suggesting solution of the underlying Chalk in pipes. Returning by footpath to the sarsen, the party noticed plantations of conifers and of rhododendrons, with bracken between,
FIELD MEETING-NETLEY HEATH AND ALBURY, SURREY.
433
all indicating that the Chalk here has a non-calcareous cover. The plateau feature of the Pliocene shelf was masked by trees and dissected by dry valleys. The road was then followed westward and the Chalk escarpment was descended to the Sherbourne Ponds. The upper pond, known as the Silent Pool, was nearly dry, the spring that feeds it having failed in the drought. The neighbouring brick-field showed Gault, and Folkestone Sand was worked, for lightening the clay, just to the south. A sarsen stone, conglomeratic in part, was seen on the edge of Albury Wood, one of several which had been claimed as megalithic remains by some archseologists, Folkestone Sand was seen again west of Weston Wood, and Bargate Stone, with pebbles, by the roadside at Dalton Hill. After tea at Albury, the path was followed through Albury Park and Shere to Gomshall, where pits were seen in an old gravel of the Tillingbourne at Gravelpits Farm, and in Folkestone Sand at Gomshall Station. 190 0. 190 6.
1929·
REFERENCES. STEBBING, W. P. D. Excursion to Netley Heath and Newlands Corner. Proc. Geo!. Assoc., vol. xvi., p. 524. HERRIES, R. S. Excursion to Shere and Albury. Proc. Geo!. Assoc. vol. xix., p. 453. DAVIES, G. M. Excursion to Netlev Heath, Newlands Corner, and the Silent Pool. Proc. Geol, A:,soc., vol. xxviii., p. 48. CHATWIN, C. P. Fossils from the lronsands on Netley Heath (Surrey). Summ. Prog. Geo!. Surv. for 1926, p. 154. DINES, H. G., and EDMUNDS, F. H. The Geology of the Country around A!dershot and Guildford , Mem, Geo!. Surv.
FIELD MEETING AT NETLEY HEATH AND ALBURY. SURREY. SATURDAY, 12TH MAY, 1934. Report by the Director, G. M. DAVIES, M.Sc., F.G.S. STARTING from Gomshall Station about 11.40 a.m., the members walked northward up Colekitchen Lane and noted the high banks cut through the Upper Greensand. Just above this point they turned left and took a footpath up the Chalk escarpment. Here they looked back to the dip-slope of the Lower Greensand, whence came the chert that occurs in many of the high-level gravels of Surrey and Hertfordshire. The path then led northward through the woods over gravelly clay-with-flints to Netley Heath, and terminated by a sarsen at an angle in the road from East Horsley to Shere (B.M. 616). It was in shallow workings to the north of this point, now disused, that casts of fragments of fossils had been found from time to time. These had been shown by Mr. C. P. Chatwin to differ markedly from the Lenham fauna, the commonest species, Corbulomya complanata, being limited to the Red Crag in East Anglia and to the Scaldisian and Poederlian in Holland and Belgium. The Director pointed out the close similarity in mineral composition and in position that linked the sands of Netley Heath with those of Ranmore Common, Headley Heath, Chipstead and Sanderstead in Surrey, Lenham to Folkestone in Kent, and Little Heath and other localities on the Chiltern dipslope. The sands here are in part overlain by, and even mingled with, gravel and clay-with-flints, and the whole is disturbed by solution of the Chalk or by deep freezing and partial thawing in Glacial times. The Geological Survey have marked the whole of these varied deposits by one colour, under the name of the Netley Heath Deposits, to which they assign a Pleistocene age. Petrological examination enables one to distinguish between the marine Pliocene sands and shingle, containing minerals newly arrived from some distant but unknown source, and the local gravel and clay-with-flints. The road was followed north-eastward to Rails Hatch, where a pit on the right, just above the 500 feet contour, exposed Pliocene sand and coarse shingle. One part of the pit showed unworn flints with their longer axes vertical, and some manganese staining, suggesting solution of the underlying Chalk in pipes. Returning by footpath to the sarsen, the party noticed plantations of conifers and of rhododendrons, with bracken between,
FIELD MEETING-NETLEY HEATH AND ALBURY, SURREY.
433
all indicating that the Chalk here has a non-calcareous cover. The plateau feature of the Pliocene shelf was masked by trees and dissected by dry valleys. The road was then followed westward and the Chalk escarpment was descended to the Sherbourne Ponds. The upper pond, known as the Silent Pool, was nearly dry, the spring that feeds it having failed in the drought. The neighbouring brick-field showed Gault, and Folkestone Sand was worked, for lightening the clay, just to the south. A sarsen stone, conglomeratic in part, was seen on the edge of Albury Wood, one of several which had been claimed as megalithic remains by some archseologists, Folkestone Sand was seen again west of Weston Wood, and Bargate Stone, with pebbles, by the roadside at Dalton Hill. After tea at Albury, the path was followed through Albury Park and Shere to Gomshall, where pits were seen in an old gravel of the Tillingbourne at Gravelpits Farm, and in Folkestone Sand at Gomshall Station. 190 0. 190 6.
1929·
REFERENCES. STEBBING, W. P. D. Excursion to Netley Heath and Newlands Corner. Proc. Geo!. Assoc., vol. xvi., p. 524. HERRIES, R. S. Excursion to Shere and Albury. Proc. Geo!. Assoc. vol. xix., p. 453. DAVIES, G. M. Excursion to Netlev Heath, Newlands Corner, and the Silent Pool. Proc. Geol, A:,soc., vol. xxviii., p. 48. CHATWIN, C. P. Fossils from the lronsands on Netley Heath (Surrey). Summ. Prog. Geo!. Surv. for 1926, p. 154. DINES, H. G., and EDMUNDS, F. H. The Geology of the Country around A!dershot and Guildford , Mem, Geo!. Surv.