THE COPROLITE INDUSTRY IN SLAPTON, BUCKS.

Following the discovery in the late-1840s that the fossils in the Cambridge Greensand were a matter of commercial proposition a new industry began that was to have enormous impact on many villages in the Eastern counties. Known by the trade name of coprolites, the fossil deposit contained not just phosphatised droppings of creatures living in the seas and on the coastal plains of Jurassic and Cretaceous Britain but also the teeth, bones, scales and claws of dinosaurs. The more famous dinosaurs of iguanodon, megalosaurus, dakosaurus, dinotosaurus and craterosaurus were found, as well as the marine lizards of ichthyosaurus, pliosaurus and plesiosaurus and the bird pterodactyl. But it wasn't just dinosaurs. Fossils of prehistoric crocodile, shark, whale, elephant, hippopotamus, oxen, bear, tapir and horse were excavated as well as fossilised trees and numerous marine organisms - the most notable being ammonites.

Not only were they of interest to the students of the new science of geology but also the religious academics hotly debating Darwin's controversial theory of evolution. Many drawing room had its fossil collection and the country's museums had shelves filled with fossils from the Greensand. But the main reason why they were extracted was not for the pursuit of academic science but commercial reasons.

Britain's growing urban population during the Industrial Revolution needed feeding. Experiments to increase food production included adding a whole range of materials to the soil. Blood, bones, soot, fish, seaweed, chalk, clay and even rags were trialled. The most effective was animal bones but the nation's farmers couldn't supply the demand. The battlefields of Europe were scoured for bones, the pyramids of Egypt were emptied of mummified cats and even Italian catacombs were reported robbed for their bones. Loaded onto ships they were taken back to the 'dens" of the coastal manure manufactories. Britain was described as a "ghoul searching the continents for bones to feed its agriculture." So, when a cheaper and abundant deposit of fossil bones was discovered in Cambridgeshire there was, as the local historian, Richard Grove, described, "The Cambridgeshire Coprolite Mining Rush."

Chemical analysis of the nodules showed them to contain between 50 and 60% calcium phosphate. Ground to a powder and dissolved in sulphuric acid the resultant mass was superphosphate of lime - the world's first artificial chemical manure. Manure manufacturers from Ipswich and London cashed in on this cheaper raw material than the other popular manure of its day - guano - phosphate-rich bird droppings.

The Cambridgeshire fossils were first worked in Burwell in 1846 and pits opened in Chesterton in 1849. The deposit was found a few metres beneath the chalk marl in a thin bed of Cambridge Greensand which lay above the gault clay. It was simply a matter of a coprolite contractor getting an agreement with the landowner to raise the fossils. He then took on a gang of labourers, bought a horse or steam-operated washmill and some tools and started digging. On average £100 an acre was paid and about 250 tons were raised from each acre (0.404ha.). Once the depth and extent of the field was ascertained, mostly by boring but in some cases exploratory pits, a trench was dug at one side of the field with the removed topsoil and subsoil placed on the boundary side. As the fossil seam was exposed pick axes and shovels were used to extract it and, thrown into wheelbarrows, it was piled near a mill ready for washing and sorting. The seam averaged about 30 inches (0.39m.) thick but in places it was up to six feet. (2.1m.). The soil above the seam on the new face was removed after undercutting and, for convenience, just thrown into the trench already worked. Backfilling meant the labourers gradually progressed across the field and onto adjoining property where a new lease was sought.

The earliest evidence of coprolite digging in Buckinghamshire was in 1869 when Henry Wilkerson, a coprolite contractor from the Eversdens in Cambs., discovered a coprolite deposit around a slight chalk rise a couple of miles south of Slapton. How he had his attention drawn to it is unknown. After approaching the landowner, Earl Brownlow, he gained an agreement to dig the fossils from Simeon and G. Brown's Farm on the Northeast side of the road from Horton Wharf to Ivinghoe Aston. (Bucks. R.O. Ashridge Estate Papers P15/49)

He paid Brownlow a royalty of £65 per acre, not much less than the rates he was paying per acre in Cambridgeshire. However, it was considerably less than the £200 per acre some contractors were paying. He most probably hired Messrs. Brown's agricultural labourers to remove top and subsoil and raise the several inches thick fossil deposit.

By June 1870 the surveyor's map of his workings showed Mr. Wilkerson' s labourers had dug 5a.2r.3p. A washmill was constructed by the stream with a slurry pit into which the dirty water was released. Great heaps of clean and sorted fossils would have amassed by the side of the road until carts and horses were ready to take them either up the road to Horton Wharf or on to Cheddington Station. Where the coprolite was sold is unknown. Documents have not emerged to show but, as shall be seen later, they probably included manure works in the Midlands.

Mr. Wilkerson must have found his investment in the picks, shovels, crowbars, planks, dog irons (supports for the planks), carts, barrows, horse, sheds, washmill etc. worthwhile. Potentially, profits of several hundred pounds could be made from every acre. The following year, 1871, he leased a further 30 acres in Ivinghoe, on the opposite side of the road. By then it seems Brownlow's land agent had discovered the rates in Cambridgeshire were much higher. He was obliged to pay almost double the previous royalty, £112 per acre. (St. John's College Archives, Ashwell file; Bucks. R.O. Ashridge Estate Papers P15/49)

Either Mr. Wilkerson went on to test other fields in the area or Brownlow's land agent was prompted to have the rest of the estate tested as records show new contracts were entered into in Cheddington and Billington. In the August of 1871 Henry Wilkerson had all his coprolite plant and machinery in Cambridgeshire auctioned. It was under a distress notice by St. John's College as he had not been paying compensation to the tenant farmer for the land out of cultivation during his workings. (O'Connor, B. (1994), ' The Coprolite Industry in Guilden Morden') He found himself in some considerable financial difficulty. The following correspondence, which three weeks later was sent to Brownlow's agent, revealed his solution:-

"Morris and Griffin,

Wolverhampton.

Some time ago Mr. Henry Wilkerson applied to us to purchase his plant erected at Slapton for the purpose of raising Coprolite and also desired he should have assigned to us the transfer of his lease from Lord Brownlow dated 12th February 1870."

(Bucks.R.O.P15/49)

Morris and Griffin were manure manufacturers keen to get a foothold in this area. They subsequently took over Wilkerson's "diggings" near Slapton and Cheddington but kept him on as their manager. He lived in Leighton Buzzard. (Kelly's Post Office Directories 1870s)

The 1871 census showed only one coprolite labourer recorded in Slapton, James Dean from Cambridge. He was a lodger in the village. To the north there were eleven coprolite labourers in Great Billington, including an "engine driver at the works," and two in Little Billington. The eldest was Joseph Stevens, 62 and the youngest, John Albon, 24. The average age was 33.1 showing it was mainly older men involved. As only 46% were born in the parish it seems likely a number had been attracted to the village to work, and three of them were lodgers. Although there were many described as "labourers" as opposed to "agricultural labourers," it is possible that those working in the pits were engaged in farm work when the census took place or they saw themselves simply as "labourers". Fourteen men would have been able to work the pits but not the amount of land that was dug over during the period of the diggings. (Bucks. R.O. 1871 Census)

The diggings attracted the interest of a local teacher, E.W. Lewis, of Leighton Buzzard. In the October of that year he gave a lecture on the area's geology to the Leighton Working Men's Mutual Improvement Society in the Hockliffe Road Reading Rooms.

"The lecturer went on to describe briefly the various industrial products which the geological formation of the district afforded, and concluded with some remarks upon coprolites, concerning which Mr Lewis said the last, and perhaps the most singular, as it is the newest of all the delvings into the old ocean beds in this district, is the search for coprolites at Slapton, Billington and Cheddington. Copper-lites the Slaptonians called them first, and many thought that copper was by some mysterious process manufactured from them. One individual even went so far as to assure the lecturer that something even more valuable than copper must be extracted from them or they would not take so much trouble to find them. As already indicated, they are the remains of fishes, reptiles, and shells. Some are clearly fish bones; others it is equally clear are shells; others are mere shapeless masses. But whatever their form, their constitution is much the same; and it is this that makes them valuable. Bones form a useful manure. Now, if we take 100 tons of bones, and analyse them, we shall find that 60 tons will be phosphate of lime, 9 tons carbonate of lime and 31 tons organic mater. Now, take 100 tons of what may be termed rich coprolites and it will be found on analysis that 83 tons will be phosphate of lime, 16 tons carbonate of lime, and 1 ton organic matter. The difference being that coprolites are much richer in phosphate of lime than bones. it is this very phosphate of lime, whether in bones or coprolite, that is so very useful to agriculturalists. Few things show more clearly how the most out of the way searches of science may turn out to be most thoroughly useful. What could appear to have a more unpromising, as far as utility is concerned, than the enquiry into the origin of certain dark-coloured stony masses found embedded in clay. Yet no sooner did the geologist arrive at the determination of their character, and at the fact that they consisted largely of phosphate of lime, that it was seen that they would be a most useful article to the farmer. Thus a speculation, or course of enquiry, instituted at first merely to satisfy man's natural thirst for knowledge, ended with a most beneficial and practical result. had not geologists troubled themselves about these things that are so absurd to many people, the coprolites might have remained in the earth to this day, useless, because their qualities were unknown. Indeed this is one moral to this little geological story - That all knowledge is useful."

(Leighton Buzzard Observer, 24th October 1871)

By 1871, 10a.1r.31p. of Simeon and G. Brown's Farm had been dug but no further evidence has emerged of the diggings during the 1870s. Whether it was related to the coprolite diggings was not specified but in November 1878 the 21a.0r.16p. pasture land held by Christ's Hospital, London, tenanted by Christopher Buckmaster was exchanged with Earl Brownlow for the 41a. 1r.15p. arable land on Dewes Green Farm. (Guildhall Library, London, Christ's Hospital Court Minute Book Vol.18, Nov.26th 1878)

There was no reference to coprolite diggers in the 1881 census for the parishes of Slapton, Eaton Bray, Ivinghoe, Edlesborough or Cheddington. In an 1881 geological paper on the Geology of the area Messrs. Pennings and Jukes-Brown mentioned that a W. Wilkerson had sent them a sample of the coprolites from the Slapton works. Maybe there were works here then and W. was a relative of Henry? (Pennings and Jukes-Browne, (1881), 'Cretaceous Rocks of Gt. Britain' Memoirs of Geological Survey of Great Britain)

Towards the end of the 1870s there were several consecutive years of heavy rain and poor harvests. This would have impacted on those coprolite works still in operation, especially with increased pumping costs. But, another reason explains their demise. The introduction of Free Trade had allowed massive imports of cheap, refrigerated meat and cereals from the United States and Canada. Food prices dropped and farmers suffered "distress". Many fell behind with rent; some were given rent reductions but others were evicted and went bankrupt. There was little demand for fertilisers when farmers couldn't sell what they grew. Accordingly demand for coprolite fell. Many diggings ceased.

There was a revival during the 1880s but no records of the work in Slapton have emerged. Whether the seam had been exhausted earlier is not known. The import of cheap rock phosphate from the United States brought coprolite prices down and reduced demand for it from manure manufacturers, coastal ones in particular. However, inland manufacturers, like Morris and Griffin, found the transport costs of bringing these phosphates to the Midlands a factor to consider, as well as the existing investment they had made in this area which they did not want to lose out on.

Today there is little evidence of the industry. Several sites of the slurry pits can still be seen, the most noticeable in the field south west of Hall Farm on Slapton Lane (OS. GR 945206). This little known industry would have had quite an impact on village life in the 1870s. Increased wages, increased spending power, stimulus for associated trades like carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights etc, an influx of young men to the area, almost certainly an increase in beer sales, the opportunity of villagers taking in lodgers would all have been experienced. Unfortunately, little of the social impact of the diggings has come to light but this book has helped record the industry lest it be forgotten.