Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Excursion to East Wickham and Bostal Heath

1906; Elsevier BV; Volume: 19; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s0016-7878(06)80019-2

2773-0743

Arthur L. Leach, B. C. Polkinghorne, A.C. Young,

Travel Writing and Literature

THE party, numbering 23, met at Plum stead station, at 2 .30p.m., and proceeded by way of the High Street and Lakedale Road (" Cage Lane" in the Ceol.Suru.Memoir) to Plumstead Common, where the first halt was made at the north-eastern corner of the common beside the path leading to Wickham Lane.In reference to former excursions the Directors remarked that the district was first visited by the Association in July, 1887, under the Directorship of the late Mr. J.G. Goodchild.Some of the sections then examined have long since been covered by the rapid growth of Plumstead, but the exposures now open are as good as, if not better than , any series formerly accessible, and exhibit very fully all the strata between the Chalk and the London Clay, together with good sections in the Pleistocene Brickearths of the Wickham Valley.The 1887 excursion is fully reported in the Proceedings ; subsequent visits in 1894 and 1901 are only briefly recorded.The Directors then drew attention to the chief features of interest in the geology of the district.To the north lay the broad valley of the lower Thames, the river itself being seen over the wide belt of alluvium which forms the marshes of Erith and Plumstead.Rising nearly 200 ft.above the marsh -land the Lower Tertiaries form the pebbly plateau on which Bostal Heath, Plum stead Common, Woolwich Common, Blackheath, and Greenwich Park stretch for 7 miles as an almost continuous belt of heath and common land .The edge of this plateau was seen to be crenated by valleys in every stage of formation: some mere hollows in Blackheath Beds.others cut down through the Woolwich loams (e.g., The" Slade "), or into the Thanet Sand, th e more advanced stage being exemplified in the East Wickham Valley, which is practically an adult "combe" with a permanent stream that has eroded its bed through London Clay and the Lower Tertiaries down to and into the Chalk.From the point where the members were assembled, successive sections could be traced, showing Chalk in the floor of the valley, Thanet, Woolwich, and Blackheath Beds on the slopes; about a mile to the south-west the London Clay mass of Shooters Hill stood out prominently.Attention was drawn to the enormous amount of denudation accomplished between the deposition of the sands and gravels on the top of Shooters Hill (V"• ••" 0