RUSHMERE,
BUCKS.
In
1875 a geologist‘s paper revealed that about a mile and a half north of
Leighton Buzzard, a very large bed of coprolite gravel lying above the Oxford
Clay had been exposed in the Rushmoor brickyard. This
was in the valley just east of Nares Gladley Farm. As the same bed had been worked further north
on the western slopes of the greensand ridge in Great Brickhill from 1872,
there is a strong possibility the brickyard owners would have exploited this
lucrative deposit as a sideline to brick manufacture. As the seam was between
four and seven foot thick it would have had a high yield and the huge demand
for these fossils for the manufacture of fertilisers at that time, makes it
seem very likely they would have been carted down the road to the Grand Union
Canal where barges could have taken them to Morris and Griffin‘s Wolverhampton
based manure works. They were operating the Brickhill works as well as many
workings in in nearby parishes.
The
fact that the whole workings were later moved 200 - 300 yards away, probably
the opposite side of the valley, may well suggest the coprolite seam extended
further and a survey taken during the Second World War of potential sites for
phosphate extraction included a sketch map of the area which showed the deposit
all around the edge of the valley. (H.Keeping, 1875;
6•Beds.28NW; K.Oakley,•British
Phosphates,•Wartime Pamphlets, Vol.8.No.3,1941(see
fig.2)