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LANDBEACH, CAMBS.

Whether there were coprolite diggings in Landbeach is not recorded but there were some in the vicinity in the late 1870s and early 1880s at Milton and Waterbeach. The 1881 census showed six men involved. Robert Buff, aged 48, was the ”Coprolite Foreman,” living on the Ely Road with his 17 year old unemployed son. As well as four coprolite labourers, all in their late teens, there was a ”stone digger – quarries”. None of them was born locally which suggests they might have come into the area to work the phosphatic nodules.

The site of one works was referred to by two geologists who paid a visit the same year, 1881, and located the diggings, ”beyond the bridge on the road from Cottenham to Landbeach and at a pond south of the Plough Inn on the Cambridge to Ely Road. A10) ” (Pennings and Jukes-Brown, 1881, p12; I.J. O‘Dell‘s ,‘A Vanished Industry‘ in Beds. Mag.1951.)

That same year, the vicar pointed out in a report to the bishop that, ”the population consists almost entirely of farmers and their labourers and a few half farmers and half labourers - the rest simply labourers.”. (CUL.EDR.C3/29) Whether these included coprolite diggers or not can only be surmised at.