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