Part 3
The Kimmeridge Clay, which comes above the Corallian, is, like the Oxford Clay, a bed of hardened marine mud. It has now become a shaley clay, and is about 140 feet thick. It forms a narrow east and west band across the county. Much of the Vale of White Horse is on this clay, and the town of Abingdon stands upon it. It is not a water-bearing formation.
The Portland Beds. A small patch of this formation is found resting upon the Kimmeridge Clay in Berkshire. It caps the rising ground south of Shrivenham, and the village of Bourton stands upon it. Its thickness is about 20 feet.
After the deposition of the Portland rocks, which are of marine origin, there is reason to believe that our district became land and a part of a continent, but no relics of this period remain here. They were all swept away when the land sank again and the Cretaceous sea flowed over Berkshire.
The Lower Greensand--our next deposit--was formed after a long interval, and, owing to earth movements which had taken place during that interval, it rests upon the older rocks in an irregular manner. It is a marine formation, and only occurs in patches, the largest of which extends from Uffington to near Faringdon. Its greatest thickness is about 60 feet, and it consists of sand with some ironstone and chert, pebble beds, and a calcareous sponge gravel. The sponge gravel, so-called from the number of fossil sponges it contains, is dug for garden paths and walks, and is exported to long distances. The fossil sponges in the gravel are abundant and beautifully preserved, and they seem to have lived on the spot. The ironstone was at one time worked near Faringdon. At New Lodge, in the parish of Winkfield, the Lower Greensand was reached in a boring at a depth of 1234 feet. A good supply of water was obtained, but it contains a large quantity of common salt.
The Gault, the next formation, consists of grey clay in the lower part and of a silty marl in the upper part, with a total thickness of some 220 feet. It crosses the county as a band, from one to three miles in width, from Ashbury to the Thames between Abingdon and Wallingford. It is a marine formation, and does not give a water-supply.
The Upper Greensand runs across the county as a narrow and irregular band about 90 feet thick, and consists of green sands and grey marl, with beds of stone in places. It is of marine origin, and provides a supply of excellent water, and consequently many villages stand upon or close to it. Ashbury, Childrey, Wantage, Hendred, and Harwell are examples.
The Chalk. This is far the most important geological formation in Berkshire, for it occupies a large portion of the surface of the county, and in the eastern part, when not at the surface, it is to be found underground. It is a light-coloured limestone, usually soft and earthy, but in parts very hard. Its full thickness is over 700 feet, and being a porous rock, the rain which falls on its great surface sinks in and furnishes a water-supply over its whole area whether the chalk be at the surface or underground. It was deposited in a sea which not only covered our district but spread over much of Europe. There was, however, probably land to the west which included Cornwall, parts of Wales, and of Ireland. The upper part of the Berkshire Chalk contains many layers and nodules of flint.
There is a long break in our geological record after the newest beds of the Chalk found in Berkshire had been deposited, for both the top of the Chalk and the bottom of the next series are wanting here, and in order to fill the interval we have to study rocks in other parts of England, in Belgium, and in Denmark. During this great interval in time the chalk sea retired, and much of Britain became land.
The Reading Beds repose upon a water- and weather-worn surface of chalk. They consist of clays and sands, and were deposited in the bed of a great river. Their thickness is from 70 to 90 feet, and good water may be obtained from the sands. In the lower part we find a bed of oysters, and rather higher up there is in some places a bed of leaves, known as the "Reading Leaf-Bed," a specimen of which is shown below. It will be noticed that the leaves are crowded together, and were no doubt buried in the mud of the river.
The Basement Bed of the London Clay comes next in order and the fossils are marine, showing that the sea was again spreading over our area. It is from 6 to 16 feet in thickness, and consists of loam and clay with green sand and pebbles. A set of shells from this bed is arranged in the Reading Museum.
The London Clay is a marine formation of very uniform character, a stiff clay, blue underground, but becoming brown near the surface, owing to the action of surface water. It contains layers of cement-stones. The thickness in the east of the county is nearly 350 feet, but the formation thins to the west, and is under 50 feet thick at Inkpen. Fossils are not uncommon, and there is a fair collection of Berkshire London Clay fossils in the Wellington College Museum. It is not a water-bearing formation. Most of Windsor Park is on London Clay, and a number of places the names of which end with "field" are upon this formation, such as Arborfield, Binfield, Burghfield, Shinfield, Swallowfield, Warfield, and Winkfield.
The Bagshot Beds, named after Bagshot Heath, consist of sand with a few beds of clay. The maximum thickness is nearly 350 feet. They are probably mainly of marine origin, but formed near the estuary of a large river. Fossils are rare in this formation in Berkshire, but a few specimens will be found in the Museums at Reading and at Wellington College. The Bagshot Beds are a water-bearing formation, but the water is not always of a satisfactory character. The scenery of the sandy Bagshot country is well shown by the view opposite.
Some indefinite time after the deposition of the Bagshot Beds considerable earth movements took place in the south of England, and Berkshire became, and has since remained, dry land. The Bagshot Beds are consequently the last marine formation in our district, and we thus complete our account of the solid geology of the county.
The solid strata are, however, to a considerable extent covered with a variety of geological deposits due to rain, frost, streams, and rivers. These deposits, often termed Drift, though not marked on the majority of geological maps, have a great importance for the dwellers in our county, simply because they form the actual surface and determine the character of the soil.
Clay with Flints is a formation covering a good deal of our Chalk. It is partly débris of the chalk formation and partly of clay beds which once rested on the Chalk. In places it is 20 feet thick. Some of the best timber in the county grows upon it.
Gravel covers a good deal of the surface in Berkshire. It is found both on the high ground and in the valleys. The high-level gravels are often over 10 feet thick and the valley gravels are more than 20 feet thick in several places. Windsor, Bray, Maidenhead, Cookham, Twyford, Wokingham, Reading, Theale, Pangbourne, and Newbury stand partly or wholly upon gravel.
Alluvium, the modern deposit of the rivers, covers a good deal of ground in some places, more especially in the valley of the Kennet.
Sarsens are blocks of sandstone which are found on or near the surface of the ground or in the beds of gravel. They were probably derived in part from the Reading Beds and in part from the Bagshot Beds. The illustration on page 40 shows three sarsen stones lying at the bottom of a thick bed of gravel in a gravel pit on Chobham Ridges. The locality is in Surrey, but not far from the Berkshire border, and similar examples occur in Berkshire.
7. NATURAL HISTORY.
The fertile district of the Vale of White Horse, the wide chalk downs, and the forest country with its sandy tracts covered by heather or pines, together with the river Thames and its tributaries, give us a considerable variety of soil, of climate, and of general conditions; and we consequently have a large variety of species both of animals and of plants, though being an inland county, many forms which people the coast are absent, or merely come as rare visitors. Naturally, too, the increase of population and the advance of civilisation have caused a great change in animal and plant life. Many species, once common, are no longer to be found and many new species have been introduced.
Probably the most imposing of the animals which have roamed over our district since the advent of man was the form of elephant known as the mammoth. It possessed enormous tusks and was covered with long coarse hair with an under pelage of short woolly hair so as to be fitted for life in a cold climate. Its bones have been found in several places in Berkshire, and teeth from Abingdon and Reading are in the Reading Museum.
The rhinoceros once lived in Berkshire, for bones, probably belonging to a woolly species, have been found in a railway cutting near Chilton. Bones of the bear, wolf, and bison have been found in the Drift deposits, and the wild boar was hunted in Berkshire in historic times.
The badger is a harmless animal which lives a quiet life, spending the daytime in a burrow, often in a fox earth, and only coming out at night. It is in consequence much more common than is generally supposed, and our county forms no exception.
The history of the various forms of deer in Berkshire is of considerable interest. The red deer is a native of the county, for its remains have been found in the marsh deposits. It lived in various parks until the Commonwealth, when most of the deer were killed. It has been reintroduced and is now to be seen in Windsor Park, Calcot Park, and at Hampstead Marshall. The fallow deer lives in a more or less tame state in several parks in the county, and it is probably an original inhabitant of Berkshire, for it occurs as a fossil at Brentford, in Middlesex. The roe is certainly a native, for remains have been found in the Newbury marshes. It now lives in the woods about Virginia Water and Sunningdale. The reindeer has been found as a fossil at Windsor.
An imperfect skull of the musk ox was found in a bed of gravel near Maidenhead in 1855, and is now in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. It was the first discovery of the remains of this animal in Britain.
As might be expected there are no very outstanding features in Berkshire ornithology. The midland position of the county is against any long list of foreign visitors, and there are no fens or broads to tempt the special birds affecting such localities. The heron is often to be seen, and there is a heronry at Virginia Water, and others at Coley Park, Buscot, and Wytham Abbey. Woodpeckers, as might be supposed, are more especially common in the forest districts of eastern Berkshire. The carrion crow is a resident but is very local in occurrence. The hooded crow is a rather uncommon winter visitor. The peregrine falcon often visits us, but the buzzard, which used to live and breed in the county, is now but a rare visitor. The great bustard was a resident up to the end of the eighteenth century but is now no longer to be counted as a British bird. The swans which we see on the rivers and on many lakes and ponds are for the most part private property, but there are often wild birds amongst them.
Of reptiles found in Berkshire, the slow-worm, common snake, and lizard abound on the moorlands, and the first of these on the chalk; the adder is not at all common.
Time was, and that not so very long ago, when the salmon might be caught in the Thames. In the reign of Edward III (1341), a petition was made to the King, complaining that salmon and other fish in the Thames were taken and destroyed by engines placed to catch the fry, which were then used for feeding pigs. The King was asked to forbid the use of these engines between London and the sea, and also to decree that no salmon be taken between Gravesend and Henley bridge in winter. A book on angling published in 1815 speaking of salmon says, "some are found in the Thames which the writer believes were justly considered to be superior to any bred in other rivers."
In recent years an attempt has been made to reintroduce the salmon into the Thames, and many young salmon have been turned out in the river, but so far without any useful result.
But though the salmon has been, and again may be an inhabitant of the Thames, the brown trout is, and always has been, the fish of Berkshire. It attains a large size, and fish of from 8 to 12 lbs. are frequently caught in the Thames. There is, however, a scarcity of suitable breeding-places for trout in the river, and the stock, during recent years, has been kept up by introducing young fish, and not only brown trout but also Lochleven trout and rainbow trout have been turned into the river in great numbers. Many of the tributaries of the Thames are excellent trout streams, the Lambourn being a particularly good one.
The pike is found in the rivers and in many a lake and pond throughout Berkshire. Grayling occur in the Kennet and are occasionally caught in the Thames. The gudgeon is a well-known Thames fish; and perch, roach, dace, barbel and minnows abound. The little ruff or pope is fairly common in the Thames, and the miller's thumb, another small fish belonging to the cooler parts of the world, is to be seen in most of our streams darting from place to place with great rapidity. The rudd, which is generally distributed through the more level part of England, is not common in Berkshire. The bream is occasionally caught in the Thames, but it is not a native and was probably introduced from Norfolk.
The great variety of soil found in the river valleys, on the chalk downs, and in the forest district gives rise to much difference in the vegetation in different parts of the county. The beds of bullrush, the yellow and purple loosestrife, and the white and yellow water-lily are intimately associated with the beauty of the Thames.
The ling, the bell heather, and the cross-leaved heath cover large tracts in the eastern part of the county, and the bilberry is found in the woods of the same district. The bramble abounds in the forest parts, and of cultivated fruits we have large orchards of plums and cherries in the northern part of the county. Some rare orchids are to be found on the chalk, and in the peat districts the interesting little sundew is quite common.
In the chalk district the holly and beech grow well, and fine oaks are to be seen in many parts of our county. Herne's Oak, in Windsor Park, has given rise to much discussion, but there can be little doubt that the tree known by that name to Shakespeare was cut down in 1796. There are some avenues of fine elms in Windsor Park--notably the Long Walk.
Of the conifers, the yew is a native of our district and grows well on the chalk, and the so-called Scotch fir (in reality a pine), a native of Scotland, has been introduced and forms extensive woods in the sandy parts of the county. The cedar of Lebanon, various kinds of cypress, the araucaria of Chile, the cryptomeria of Japan and the Wellingtonia (Sequoia) of California have been introduced into the county. On the opposite page is a view of an avenue of the Wellingtonia near Wellington College.
8. CLIMATE AND RAINFALL.
The climate of a country or district is, briefly, the average weather of that country or district, and it depends upon various factors, all mutually interacting, upon the latitude, the temperature, the direction and strength of the winds, the rainfall, the character of the soil, and the proximity of the district to the sea.
The differences in the climates of the world depend mainly upon latitude, but a scarcely less important factor is proximity to the sea. Along any great climatic zone there will be found variations in proportion to this proximity, the extremes being "continental" climates in the centres of continents far from the oceans, and "insular" climates in small tracts surrounded by sea. Continental climates show great differences in seasonal temperatures, the winters tending to be unusually cold and the summers unusually warm, while the climate of insular tracts is characterised by equableness and also by greater dampness. Great Britain possesses, by reason of its position, a temperate insular climate, but its average annual temperature is much higher than could be expected from its latitude. The prevalent south-westerly winds cause a drift of the surface-waters of the Atlantic towards our shores, and this warm-water current, which we know as the Gulf Stream, is the chief cause of the mildness of our winters.
Most of our weather comes to us from the Atlantic. It would be impossible here within the limits of a short chapter to discuss fully the causes which affect or control weather changes. It must suffice to say that the conditions are in the main either cyclonic or anticyclonic, which terms may be best explained, perhaps, by comparing the air currents to a stream of water. In a stream a chain of eddies may often be seen fringing the more steadily-moving central water. Regarding the general north-easterly moving air from the Atlantic as such a stream, a chain of eddies may be developed in a belt parallel with its general direction. This belt of eddies or cyclones, as they are termed, tends to shift its position, sometimes passing over our islands, sometimes to the north or south of them, and it is to this shifting that most of our weather changes are due. Cyclonic conditions are associated with a greater or less amount of atmospheric disturbance; anticyclonic with calms.
The prevalent Atlantic winds largely affect our island in another way, namely in its rainfall. The air, heavily laden with moisture from its passage over the ocean, meets with elevated land-tracts directly it reaches our shores--the moorland of Devon and Cornwall, the Welsh mountains, or the fells of Cumberland and Westmorland--and blowing up the rising land-surface, parts with this moisture as rain. To how great an extent this occurs is best seen by reference to the map of the annual rainfall of England on the next page, where it will at once be noticed that the heaviest fall is in the west, and that it decreases with remarkable regularity until the least fall is reached on our eastern shores. Thus in 1906, the maximum rainfall for the year occurred at Glaslyn in the Snowdon district, where 205 inches of rain fell; and the lowest was at Boyton in Suffolk, with a record of just under 20 inches. These western highlands, therefore, may not inaptly be compared to an umbrella, sheltering the country further eastward from the rain.
The above causes, then, are those mainly concerned in influencing the weather, but there are other and more local factors which often affect greatly the climate of a place, such, for example, as configuration, position, and soil. The shelter of a range of hills, a southern aspect, a sandy soil, will thus produce conditions which may differ greatly from those of a place--perhaps at no great distance--situated on a wind-swept northern slope with a cold clay soil.
Berkshire is an inland county but no part of it is as much as 75 miles from the coast. The chalk downs have a fine bracing climate, and though some of the valleys may be relaxing and some of the moorland tracts bleak, the general climate of the county is exceedingly healthy. Compared with the south coast of England Berkshire is rather cooler, with somewhat less sunshine and less rain than the coast.
Temperature, it should be remarked, varies according to height above sea level, falling about 1° Fahr. for each 100 to 300 feet upwards. In a comparatively level district, like Berkshire, this is not a very serious consideration. The mean temperature for the year varies in different parts of England from about 47·3 in the north-eastern counties to about 49·6 in the south-east. The mean temperature is about 49·0 in northern Berkshire and about 47·5 in south-western Berkshire. It may be of interest to give the mean temperature for one year at places in and close around Berkshire. We take the year 1907 and the figures are as follows--Maidenhead 49·4, Wokingham 47·7, Swarraton in Hampshire 47·9, Marlborough in Wiltshire 47·4, and Oxford 48·9.
The average temperature in the month of January varies from 37·0 to 38·0 in different parts of the county, and the average temperature for July from 59·7 to 62·0.
In England bright sunshine is most prevalent on the coast and decreases inland. The annual total amount for the south and east coast from Cornwall to Norfolk is nearly 1800 hours, whilst in the northern midland counties the amount is about 1200 hours. There are no definite data available for giving the amount for Berkshire, but there are probably about 1500 hours of bright sunshine in the year.
The rainfall varies a good deal in different parts of the county. The amount is lowest in the north-east and highest in the south-west. Thus Wallingford and Cookham have a rainfall of about 23 inches a year on an average. At Reading, which is somewhat to the south-west, the amount is nearly 24 inches a year, and on a line running through Wellington College and Yattendon the amount is nearly 25 inches. Letcombe Regis and Ashbury have a rainfall of between 25 and 26 inches. At Faringdon the figure is above 26, and in the south-western corner of the county there is a rainfall of about 29 inches a year. The average yearly rainfall for the whole of England is 31·62 inches, and for the British Isles it is 39·25 inches. Looking at the extremes of rainfall in England we find the lowest at Shoeburyness with an average of 19·7 inches for the year, whilst Seathwaite in Cumberland has an average rainfall of 133·53 inches per annum.
9. PEOPLE--RACE. POPULATION.
We know little about the ancient people who made and used the flint implements which are found in the river gravels around Reading and at other places, and even when we come to the latter part of the Stone Age, though we find skeletons in the barrows or mounds upon our downs, our information about the race is exceedingly small, and this is perhaps not to be wondered at, for in no case do we find any knowledge of the art of writing in the stage of culture when only stone and no metal implements were used. Moreover, we must bear in mind that all we know about early England from written history is from the works of foreign merchants or of foreign conquerors.
The Belgae who occupied the part of Britain south of the Thames at the time of Caesar's invasion may have been partly or mostly Gauls. The tribe named the Atrebates occupied most or all of what is now Berkshire, and Silchester in Hampshire was their chief town.
During the Roman occupation the district was far from the frontier, and the inhabitants continued their peaceful village life, becoming more or less Romanised.
After the departure of the Romans the Saxons spread gradually over the country and were probably settled in Berkshire before A.D. 568. The invaders made a clean sweep of Roman civilisation, destroyed the villages and houses, and extirpated the Christian religion.
In A.D. 597 Augustine with his band of monks landed in the Isle of Thanet, and the conversion of the Saxons proceeded rapidly, and in time letters, arts, and civilisation returned to the county.
In later times Berkshire was overwhelmed by the Danes, and conquered by the Normans, but neither Danes nor Normans made anything like so great a change in the face of the country as had been effected by the Saxons, and there is even now a large Saxon element in our people, in our language, and in our manners and customs.