A Remarkable Quartzite Implement

Extract

The gravel-pit in which the implement was found in November, 1929, is known as the Bilford Pit, and is situated about a mile due east of the river Severn, in the Bilford Road, and a mile and a half due north from the centre of Worcester City. The surface level is 100 feet O.D., and the pit is owned and worked by the Worcester Corporation.

The area in the immediate vicinity of Worcester could not have been exempt from some of the effects of the abnormal climate that prevailed over the British Islands during the Ice Age, yet we have at present no clear evidence of an invasion of the district by ice-sheets. The drift deposits around Worcester comprise a great variety of pebbles, beds of sand, and a few boulders. The pebbles are similar to those obtained from the Permian and Bunter conglomerates, and the pebble-beds of the Lickey and Clent district (about sixteen miles to the north of Worcester). They include yellow, brown, and liver-coloured quartzites, vein quartz, sandstone, chert, limestone, slate and various igneous rocks.

The occurence of marine shells, Cretaceous flints, Liassic fossils, and other drift materials in the gravels extending from Cheshire to Gloucestershire, led Murchison to believe they were laid down by a marine current flowing from the north. Few geologists now accept this explanation.