The Inferior Oolite and Contiguous Deposits of the Doulting-Milborne-Port District (Somerset)

Abstract

I. Introduction. In a paper communicated to the Society in 1907, I gave an account of the Inferior Oolite and contiguous deposits of the district between Bath and Doulting. In another paper, also communicated to this Society, but fourteen years earlier, Mr. S. S. Buckman described the same series as developed in the neighbourhood of Sherborne. Between these two districts, however, is one concerning the Inferior Oolite and contiguous deposits of which comparatively little has been published. The object of the present paper is to make good this deficiency. (i) Previous Literature.—The earliest reference to the Inferior Oolite and contiguous deposits of this district is contained in Conybeare & Phillips, ‘Outlines of the Geology of England & Wales’ 1822. These authors, however, only note (p. 255) that ‘Doulting hill is celebrated for its quarries of the Inferior Oolite, which here affords a valuable freestone,’ and describe the course of the main escarpment to the south—past Bruton, Castle Cary, and the Cadburys to Yeovil. Sir Henry De la Beche gave a generalized section of the Jurassic rocks at Scale Hill, near Batcombe, a village between Doulting and Bruton (see map, fig. 1, p. 488). He estimated the thickness of the Inferior Oolite there at 55 feet, remarking that the upper part was ‘rubbly limestone’ and the lower part ‘oolitic [limestone].’ It is interesting to notice, in view of the occurrence of a clay-bed immediately below the Inferior Oolite in the railway-cutting at Doulting, that De la Beche also observed ‘thin seams