Back to Bedfordshire publications
THE
COPROLITE DIGGINGS IN ASTWICK, BEDS
Few people are aware that fossil digging was
once a lucrative occupation in Astwick. It was in the surrounding villages as
well. The fossils, known by many as “coprolites” and thought to be fossilised
droppings of bear, lizard, wildebeest, fish or dinosaur, were termed by
geologists as phosphatic nodules. They contained the fossilised teeth, claws,
scales and bones of all sorts of dinosaurs - iguanodon, megalosaurus,
dinotosaurus, dakosaurus, craterosaurus, and pterodactyl as well as the marine
lizards - pliosaurus, plesiosaurus and ichthyosaurus. Hippopotamus, elephant,
rhinoceros, crocodile, hyena, bear, tapir, horse, ox, shark and whale were
unearthed as well as numerous shells, sponges and many other marine organisms.
Although the nineteenth century geologists disputed their coprolitic content
excellent specimens have been unearthed recently.
It caused localised inflation
when farm labourers were able to get higher wages in the fossil pits. Farmers
had to pay their labourers more to get the farmwork done. Landowners made
considerable fortunes allowing their fields to be worked for the fossils. They
were a valuable commodity, not only in providing the budding new sciences of
geology and palaeontology with material for research papers and filling the
shelves and cabinets of museums but also for their phosphate content. The best
specimens were sold to visiting scholars who haunted the pits in the hope of
finding new species or better examples. Many found their way into the Sedgwick
Museum in Cambridge, the Ashmolean in Oxford and others across the country.
More often than not the diggers pocketed the better quality smaller finds to
sell for a few shillings. The bulk of the deposit was worthless geologically
speaking, being an assortment of amorphous lumps but they were the basic raw
material for a new industry - that of superphosphate manufacture - the first
artificial chemical manure. After being ground to a powder the fossils were
dissolved in sulphuric acid to produce a soluble material, particularly
effective on root crops.
The coprolite industry
started on the south-east Suffolk coast and spread to the Cambridgeshire fens
in 1846. The diggings reached Cambridge by 1849 and the Ashwell and Hinxworth
area in 1857. The fossil deposit was dug from the base of the Lower
Cambridgeshire Greensand which outcropped in this area too. Here the phosphatic
nodule bed was found all round the edge of the chalk marl where it bordered the
boulder clay. Once the landowners realised there was a deposit on their land
they would have it tested. A surveyor would come in and do test bores or pits
to ascertain its depth, extent, continuity, quality in terms of additional
pebbles and, more importantly, its phosphate content.
If the landowner farmed
themselves they would sometimes use their own agricultural labourers to dig the
deposit out. Sometimes the tenant farmers were allowed to, in the early days of
the industry paying the landowner a royalty per ton initially for the right to
dig them. Otherwise a coprolite contractor was awarded a lease. Royalties
ranged from seven shillings (£0.35) to fifteen shillings (£0.75) for every ton
the workmen raised but by the mid-1860s surveyors recognising how lucrative it
would be for them, encouraged landowners to shift to royalties per acre. The
pits were measured twice a year - at Michaelmas and Lady Day. In some parts of
Cambridge sums up to £200 per acre were offered but they averaged just under
£100. In their heyday the best quality coprolites were bought by manure
manufacturers at £3.70 a ton so many hundreds of pounds profit could be
realised from every acre. When agricultural rents rarely exceeded £1.50 an acre
one understands why the historian Richard Grove termed it the Cambridgeshire
Coprolite Mining Rush.
With the coprolite yields
averaging about 250 tons an acre there were enormous profits to be made. It was
simply the job of digging them out after removing he overlying top and sub soil
- in this area down to about twelve feet (4.2m.). Picks, shovels and crowbars
were used. Barrows were filled and wheeled over to the site of a washmill in
which the fossils were cleaned. In some areas horses pulled the carts along a
tramway laid along the edge of the field.
The mill was often adjacent
to a stream from where the water could be pumped or else a well had to be sunk.
Unfortunately, if any Victorian photographer captured one in print, it has not
come to light. An artist’s impression of one can be seen on page .. . This was
quite a novel development from the wooden tray immersed in the bank of the
estuary used in Suffolk coastal parishes. According to Charles Lucas, the son
of the Burwell doctor whose land was the first to be dug for coprolites in
Cambridgeshire,
“The first thing to do was to throw up a hill in the
middle of the ground, and this was done by first erecting a post about ten or twelve
feet long, and throwing the (top)soil around it to a height of eleven or twelve
feet and of thirty feet in diameter. Three feet from the centre a ring would be
formed six to eight feet wide and four feet deep. This would be paved with
bricks and the sides would be sheets of iron. On one side of the hill a
platform was made from a wooden tank, to which was connected a pump eighteen
feet long; a pipe from the tank would go with the ring and opposite the tank
was a trapped outlet, and on the outer side of the hill a square of about two
chains would be earthed up a little to form a sort of pan. From the central
post a wooden arm would be attached about twelve to fourteen feet long; to this
would be attached a wimpole tree, to which a horse would be yoked. Connected to
the centre of the post would be a light rail which was fixed to the horse
bridle to keep the horse always in its track; from the arm would be suspended
two iron harrows which ran well in on the bottom of the ring. When the soil
containing the fossils was wheeled up to the ring a sufficient quantity of
water would be let in. As the horse went round a creamy fluid would be produced
and the fossils would drop on the floor. Then the trapped outlet would be opened
and the creamlike fluid, called “slurry” would flow into pans. This operation
having been repeated a number of times the fossils on the floor would be washed
clear of earth and weighed up.”
(Lucas, C. (1931), ‘Fenman’s
World’, Norwich, p.31)
Once washed and sorted in the early stages of
the industry they would have been taken to a weighing machine, probably set up
by the gate to the field. Later they would have been paid by the ton at the railway
station. It was only a short distance for them to have been then carted to
Arlesey Station. Loaded into drop sided trucks trains the coprolites would have
been sent to the manure factories of Cambridge, Ipswich, London and elsewhere.
It was the enclosure and subsequent drainage of
Rev. Clutterbuck’s land in the Hinxworth and Ashwell area in the late 1850s by
the surveyor, Bailey Denton that discovered the coprolite seam. (Clutterbuck,
Robert, (1877), ‘The Coprolite Beds at Hinxworth,’ Trans. Watford Natural
History Soc. Vol. 1. p.238; see author’s account of Hinxworth) He set up a
company to exploit them and his work attracted farmers and manure merchants
alike to get involved with the diggings.
At Michaelmas
1862 Mr. Lawes moved into this area. With his competitors having a strong
foothold in the Cambridge area he was keen to dominate this area of newly
discovered coprolites in Bedfordshire. He leased 10 acres of land in Astwick,
part of a field called Fox Holes owned by C. C. Hale. It was tenanted by Hugh
Fossey Smyth. There was no indication as to how much royalty per acre was paid.
Like the land in Hinxworth and Ashwell it
“...Had been
drained in 1855 at the expense of the tenant, (less the tiles). In the Spring
of 1862 was all manured with good dung and 2 cwts. of Lawes’ manure per acre for
turnips which is a good preparation for a succession of crops.”
(Document in possession of Mr
D. Smyth, Edworth)
Mr. Smyth was
given notice to quit in 1863 and was eventually compensated to the extent of
£138 5 0d. Who Mr. Lawes brought in to supervise the work and arrange the
transport of the washed fossils to the nearby station is unknown. The work
entailed raising these fossils would have provided fairly lucrative employment
for many local men and boys. They even attracted men from elsewhere. Mr Farey,
a local man, told of how, from Foxholes, the work progressed generally
eastwards through Great Mead, Little Mead, Thorns, part at the top of 30 Acres,
Sward Brook and 18 Acres towards Hinxworth. They were also found in Old Farm, 6
Acres in the ditch, east of Glebe Farm and just south of Hinxworth. (Ibid.)
By the mid-1860s the land agents called in by
landowners to arrange the coprolite contracts altered the arrangements. Instead
of a royalty being paid for every ton raised which incurred difficulties in
accurate weighing at the site, it was recommended that royalties per acre were
paid. As this entailed taking accurate surveys twice a year it provided the
surveyors with a regular source of income. Lawes had taken on the services of
the Hitchin-based surveyor, George Beaver, who recorded in his diary
"On the 3rd Jan.1863 I go to Edworth to make survey
of some lands for coprolite diggings on the estate of Mr. Hale of King’s Walden
- this is the commencement of works in that quarter.”
(Beaver’s
diaries, Hitchin Museum, p.74a)
How long the work
took to raise all the coprolite was not recorded. Documentation to show that
other landowners in the parish similarly arranged with Mr. Lawes or others to
have the coprolites raised has not come to light.
The 1871 census showed no one involved. A number
of reasons may explain this. The work had ceased at that time. Farmers may well
have used their agricultural labourers to do the work and they didn’t consider
it “fossil” or “coprolite” work. The bulk of the operations were a winter
activity, once the harvest was in, and the census was usually taken in April.
At this time of year the farmers wanted all their labourers at work in the
fields.
In 1872 a group of businessmen bought Lawes’
Chemical Manure Company and coprolite contracts for £300,000 but by 1874,
unable to pay his the full amount, they allowed him the coprolite contracts.
Their account books show the Astwick workings had cost £183 15s.3d. To open and
develop and that there were 7a.3r.28p. Left to work. (Lawes Chem. Manure Co.
Private Ledger, I, p.98 (Valence House Museum, Dagenham) they were still in
operation in 1878 as Beaver’s diary noted that
"Coprolite diggings are carried on this year at Pirton Grange, Henlow Oldfield, Astwick
Bury, Ashwell & Stondon... all of which have required attention and have
given a very acceptable supply of work.”
(Beaver, op.cit., p.117a)
In the latter years of the
1870s there were four consecutive years of bad weather, heavy rain and poor
harvests which badly affected farmers and coprolite diggers alike. Wet weather
made the work dangerous and incurred increased pumping costs. Economic problems
were exacerbated by the then government’s introduction of Free trade. Vast quantities
of cheap meat and grain surpluses from the American Prairies were shipped into
Great Britain. Home prices plummeted. On top of this newly discovered rock
phosphate from Charleston, Carolina started to be shipped into British ports.
Much cheaper than coprolites it caused prices to drop to less than £2.00 a ton.
Many pits were abandoned, coprolite contractors asked to be allowed reductions
of their leases. Some landowners refused and forced them into bankruptcy.
Farmers too tried to arrange rent reductions, some met with the same fate. Many
farms were untenanted. The Agricultural Depression had set in. Manure
manufacturers suffered too. Farmers weren’t buying fertilisers to grow food
they couldn’t sell. The prices of “super” fell. This downward spiral in trade
came full circle when the manure manufacturers reduced purchases of the
overseas phosphates. There was no market for “super”.
By late-1881 there was a brief revival in some
areas but it is not known whether the diggings in Astwick continued that long.
It was mainly occasioned by inland manure manufacturers whose shareholders in
many cases were farmers or landowners with coprolite holdings. In the case of
the Farmers Manure Company of Royston their managing director owned vast
reserves of coprolites on his land in Bassingbourn! There was also the fact
that freight rates had gone up so buying in imported phosphates was not quite
as economic as for the coastal manufacturers. Cheaper coprolites were still
available.
There
was a local story told of Jack Wilson of Edworth, who had worked in the
diggings and was able to retire on the money he had made. He lived happily on
his four acres keeping a few pigeons. In Astwick field, he had said, there was
a wooden paymaster's shack where the coprolite gang was paid and the fossils
were washed in Hinxworth Field Barns, which used to be thatched. A little track
ran down Love’s Farm from the “quarries” to these barns and beyond Jarmans
there were white patches in the fields where the subsoil had been brought to the
surface and the men had not replaced the topsoil. “Slub pans” were also to be
found near these patches where the wastewater from the washing of the
coprolites was allowed to accumulate and dry out before supposedly being put on
the diggings before the topsoil was replaced. In the Middle of Saltmore there
was a well and a ring of bricks, which was another site of the washmill. (See
author’s account of the diggings in Arlesey, Hinxworth, Ashwell, Dunton,
Guilden and Steeple Mordens)
The
first 6” geological map of this area of 1931 shows a coprolite pit on the West
Side of the Great North Road, just below Topler’s Hill. Here the gault clay met
the chalk marl in Astwick Field. (O.S. 6 inch Beds. 23NE 1931) The road cutting
must have exposed the coprolites in the greensand formation.
The
diggings also unearthed some archaeological remains giving evidence of Roman
occupation in the area.
“Near Astwick a number of human skeletons
were found during coprolite digging; near them were 10 Samian vessels. A sword,
a shield boss, a number of spearheads and a knife were found with the
skeletons. The site is on flat ground near a stream. (O.S. 216385)”
(Trans.
Herts. Nat. Hist. Soc. IV (1886); Fox, (1923), ‘Archaeology of Cambs.’ p.267)
Where the finds went is unknown but in many cases where
the diggings unearthed treasures like this the diggers slipped good bits into
their pockets and sold them on Cambridge Market.
Back to Bedfordshire publications