CHAPTER II - SOILS AND SETTLEMENTS

Abstract

The inadequate implements of early man compelled him to adapt himself disproportionately to his natural environment, and as a broad generalization it may be said that the oak forests and dense undergrowth associated with heavy undrained clay lands were a formidable obstacle to settlement. This chapter reviews multifarious variations in the soil and topography of the South Buckinghamshire. It is not unusual to find a chalk pit with chalk extending up to the surface soil on one side of a hill, and deep gravel workings on the other. The archaeological Upper Icknield Way Belt constituted probably as a favourable an area as any in South Buckinghamshire for early settlement. Chilterns has a wide chalk plateau sloping gently south-eastwards from a high and cliff-like escarpment. The plateau of the dip-slope is deeply scored by many steep-sided, at present mainly dry valleys. On the steeper slopes, the chalk is near the surface and often exposed but at the bottom of the valleys, it is overlaid to varying depths by downwash from the superficial deposits of Clay-with-Flints which cap the surrounding high ground. This Clay-with-Flints capping, accompanied by spreads of brickearth and associated Pebbly Clay and Sand, and in the neighbourhood of the south-eastern boundary, occasional outliers of Reading Beds and Glacial Gravels, is a notable feature of the Chiltern high ground. It varies greatly in depth and thickness, and in some areas is so full of flints that the soil itself seems almost obscured.