Geology Of The Country Around Bury St Edmunds

The district described in this memoir is typical of prosperous, rural East Anglia. The local economy and landscape are dominated by agriculture. Geology, at first glance, appears to be of minor importance as an influence on the scenery and on industry other than agriculture. However, it is the primary control on the nature and distribution of two major resources, aggregate and groundwater.

Little geological research has been carried out previously within this sparsely populated, rural district which lies to the south of Norwich and east of Thetford. The area is almost entirely covered with Drift deposits, the greater part being a gently undulating plateau composed of chalky till. The deposits of Anglian age are recognised as the products of two distinct ice sheets, and older pre-anglian fluvial sands and gravels are considered to represent the deposits of an early ancestral Thames river and its tributaries. The district has a great range of Quaternary deposits which contain a valuable record of rapid changes of climatic and depositional regimes during glacial and post-glacial time, which in turn provide insights into past global change.

This memoir traces the geological history of the district from the muddy seas and volcanicity of the early Palaeozoic of 450 million years ago, via the deserts of the Trias and the shallow tropical and subtropical seas of the Jurassic and Cretaceous, to the last glaciation 18,000 years ago, when much of the district was covered by ice. Finally, it records the history of the period after the retreat of the ice when temperate climates returned and the broad hollow that was to become Fenland and the Wash became progressively filled with freshwater peats, estuarine muds and marine sands as sea level rose in response to the melting of the ice.

Vols. 1-108 include Proceedings of the society (separately paged, beginning with v. 30)