A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE land in England. The valley of the Thames has some rich pastures, and the Low-level al- luvium in the Kennet valley, near the junction of the Thames and the Ock, and between Mar- low and Windsor, produces large tracts of good meadow and corn land. Neither coal nor iron is found in the county. A rich and important family once endeavoured to supply the deficiency of the former useful substance, and spent a fortune in boring for coal in the neighbourhood of Radley, with the result of a considerable loss of fortune but no dis- covery of a carboniferous stratum. With the exception of the brick, tile and pottery works in the southern and eastern parts of the county the industries dependent on the mineral resources of Berkshire are on a small scale and are carried on mainly for the supply of local needs. In the north, along the outcrop of the Corallian Beds between Abingdon and Faring- don, stone of various qualities has been worked from very early times. The principal quarries now open are at Marcham, Kingston Bagpuize, Stanford in the Vale and Shelling- ford, but the remains of others, which may still be traced in the fields, show that formerly this industry must have been of greater importance than at present. The irregular bands of hard calcareous sandstone found in the lower part of this formation furnish good building material which has been much used in the district for churches, houses and barns, and also to a great extent for the walls which here form the fences round the fields, thus giving the country the peculiar ' stony ' appearance which is still more marked further to the north in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. The upper part of the Corallian Beds consists of oolitic limestone and rubbly coral-rock known as ' rag.' These have been used for rough building, for road- mending and for lime-burning. Lime for the buildings belonging to the Abbey of Abingdon in the fourteenth century was obtained from the quarries of Cumnor. 1 The rag-stone is still burnt for lime at Chaw- ley near Cumnor, the material being obtained from shallow workings which are filled in at the close of each season. Chalk, the commonest of the rocks of Berkshire, has yielded material for a number of small industries. For building purposes chalk itself, when properly chosen and well seasoned before use, proves fairly durable, especially for inside work. The manufacture of whiting is another 1 Accts. of the Abbey of Abingdon (Camden Soc.), p. 47. small industry dependent on chalk for its raw material. For the production of a good article it is necessary that the chalk should be pure and white and as free from flints as possible. The usual method of preparing the material is to break up the lumps of freshly quarried chalk, to pick out the flints and to throw the remainder into a harrow-mill, where it is further broken up in water, the finer part being run off into tanks, where it gradually consolidates into ' slurry,' while the coarser part remains in the mill and is thrown away. When the slurry has become suffici- ently thick it is dug out and made into whiting and dried in lumps in sheds with open sides. An old-established manufactory is still carried on, on a small scale, at Warren Row near Hurley, where the chalk is obtained from underground workings in the side of a hill. Kintbury was formerly the principal seat of this industry in Berkshire. Mr. Bristow, writing in 1862,2 says : ' Chalk is made into whiting at Kintbury, and sent by canal thence in considerable quantities to Bristol, where it is consigned to the oil and colourmen. . . . At Kintbury there are five manufacturers of whiting, one of whom makes about 600 tons per annum, the others about 300 tons each, making a total of about 1,800 tons. Formerly it used to fetch 30^. per ton, but now it only sells for 8^.' At the present time (1904) there is one whiting manufactory at Kint- bury, the produce of which is mainly used locally. A considerable number of men find employ- ment in dredging gravel or ' ballast ' from the bed of the Thames for use as building material and other purposes. The coarser part is used for concrete and the finer for the best kinds of mortar and plaster. Here may be mentioned the quarrying of the ' sponge-gravel ' at Coxwell near Faring- don which has been carried on for over 200 years. 3 The deposit is of Lower Greensand age, consists mainly of fossil sponges and other organic remains, and is in great demand for use on garden walks and similar situations on account of its bright colour and its power of absorbing moisture, paths made of it keeping a dry surface in the wettest weather. In another part of the same deposit on a hill about a mile south-west of Faringdon are
- On the Geology of Parts of Berkshire, etc.
(Mem. Geol. Survey, 1862), p. 17 ; see also The Cretaceous Rocks of Britain (Mem. Geol. Survey, 1904), iii. 393. 3 E. C. Davey in Trans. Newbury Dist. Field Club, vol. ii. Paper separately printed, Wantage, 1874. 372
