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WRECCLESHAM AND FRENSHAM, NEAR FARNHAM, HANTS.

 

In a geological article in the late 1848 it was mentioned that conspicuous beds of phosphates were found in a pit in Wrecclesham, above the church on the south of the Wey. Their agricultural value as a fertiliser was being exploited by the locals.

”On the opposite or south side of the River Wey, above the new church, in the village of Wrecklesham, there is an outcropping of the gault, below which are some very conspicuous beds of phosphates. At this place a pit has been opened in search of them, or, more correctly, the outcrop on the side of the hill has been worked into. There are three distinct beds of fossils: the first lies above the thin seam of ironstone; it is about three or four feet thick, the fossils being intermingled in a soft matrix of sand and clay. This bed has been wholly carted away, as it was dug to be applied to a neighbouring field of a loose gravelly texture; this was done because the fossils could only be obtained by the tedious process of hand-picking. It may be, perhaps, worth while to remark, that this portion had occasionally been carted on the land before, and always with marked benefit. This good result may be partly attributed to the facility with which many of these fossils decompose when exposed to the alterations of weather... ...Another outcrop has been followed out in the commons at a spot distant about half a mile SW from the above pit; but here there is only one bed beneath the iron-sandstone. On digging the fossils the mass is broken to pieces with a pickaxe and passed through a half-inch seive; just in the same manner as gravel is obtained for road-making. When the fossils become tolerably dry, they are then passed over a finer seive, which gets rid of the greater part of the loose adhering sand. About twenty tons of clean fossils have been dug from these two sites, at a cost of fifteen shillings a ton. The fossils are easily ground up into powder between cylindrical rollers. The same mill is employed to grind the fossils both of the upper and lower greensand. If a higher percentage of phosphate of lime were required for any particular purpose, it might be raised to about 55 or 60 per cent. by a subsequent process of seiving, which separates the coarser grains of sand from the powder...Some are not larger than hazel nuts, others weigh three or four pounds each. At present there are few facts extant which bear upon the agricultural properties of these fossils; yet the few which have been noticed are strikingly illustrative of their value as fertiliser. In the parish of Frensham, about ten or fifteen years ago, (1830s) the late proprietor of one of the fields where the fossils abound was in the practise of carting away, at leisure times, very large quantities of the lower part of the gault clay embracing the fossil bed; it was taken to another part of the arm where the land is of a sandy nature. Upon the crops in succeeding years the good arising from the application to this soil was evident at a glance. The proprietor was induced to cart this soil upon his other land on account of the number of fossils which it contained, he then supposing they were rich in carbonate of lime. Distance prevented the cartage being continued to a much greater extent”.

(J.Manwaring Paine and J. Thomas Way, ”On the Phosphoric Strata of the Chalk Formation• Journ. Roy.Agric.Soc. vol.ix,1848 pp78-9)

 

(Other geological references include:- Jukes-Brown, ”Cretaceous Rocks of Britain,• 1900 p430; I. O‘Dell in A Vanished Industry‘,1951,p2; Strahan,Flitt and Denham,•Mineral Resources of G.B. 1915-19,’ Mem.Geol. Surv. p19)

 

There were further references in 1848 to beds being exposed in the cuttings of lanes, where, over the centuries, rain washed down the ruts from cartwheels to create ‘hollow trackways’.

“After leaving the parish of Frensham and proceeding westward through the parish of Kingsley, the fossiliferous beds are exposed in the fields lying below the talus of the escarpment of the fire-stone rock to the neighbourhood of Petersfield. In many of the fields the gault clay is denuded, and the fossils are exposed on the surface. In fact, over an area of several acres the fossils are exposed on the surface, having been brought up by ploughing, trenching, and draining. A good many tons now lying upon the ground might be picked up at a trifling cost. All the specimens obtained in this quarter exhibit a very large amount of phosphoric acid. It is also worthy of notice that most of the land selected for the growth of hops in this district is situated upon the stratum of fossils. The farmers too in the neighbourhood uniformly agreed in remarking that the fields were their most productive ones, both in hops and corn”. (J. Manwaring Paine and J. Thomas Way, ”On the Phosphoric Strata of the Chalk Formation• Journ. Roy.Agric.Soc. vol.ix,1848 p p81