The Weekend Excursion – the Plio-Pleistocene ‘Crag’ deposits of Suffolk,

June 20th – 22nd 2003

Our annual weekend excursion was a resounding success and was supported by our best-ever turnout for a weekend trip, 30 members, partners and children, plus a number of locals who joined us with the local leader, Roger Dixon. Our other leader was Section member Peter Long, and we owed a debt to both leaders for their skilful and knowledgeable guidance. We were based in the picturesque market town of Woodbridge, a remarkable survival of the sort of town once common in England. I had the feeling it was 1953, not 2003, while we were there. This feeling was reinforced by our hotel, the old coaching inn, The Bull, squarely positioned in the main square of the town where it has stood for at least 300 years I guessed. The stairs creaked and there seemed to be mysterious nooks and crannies everywhere. But enough about the town and hotel, what about our weekend?

The group at Broom Pit near Orford © Andrew Swift

Almost everyone arrived on Friday 20th, and the Secretary and myself positioned ourselves in the bar to ‘meet and greet’ people as they arrived, and to distribute the latest Charnia and the circular for the Nottingham field trip, which we’d brought with us. Later, at 8.00, we gathered in a room in the hotel where Peter and Roger introduced us to the itinerary for the weekend. After that most of us took a leisurely stroll around Woodbridge, examining the internal architecture of the licenced premises. Saturday dawned bright and warm and we enjoyed a classic English summer’s day, which began with a drive to Melton old church, which was out of commission as a place of worship, but still maintained by local historians. Our visit wasn’t to see actual geology, but to view the graves (or rather be near them, as they were now covered over for safety reasons and beneath a luxuriant growth of meadow grass) of the Woods’, father and son, who were the first describers of much of the Crag fauna and did the foundation work on the stratigraphy of the Crags and glacial deposits. There were plaques to the two in the church, which had been specially opened for us.

Large-scale cross-sets at Richmond Farm Pit, Orford © Andrew Swift

Broom Pit near Orford was our next port of call, opened in the lower levels of the Coralline Crag of Late Pliocene age, and newly re-excavated. These were about the oldest deposits we saw, and like most of the localities we visited, the beds were full of fossils, sadly mostly comminuted as was usually the case in the high-energy sand waves and bars which characterise much of the succession.

From Broom we motored down into Orford to view the spectacular cross-bedding in the Sudbourne Member of the Coralline Crag Formation at Richmond Farm pit, which took us to lunchtime. As we were near the picturesque harbour at Orford, we made our way there to eat our sandwiches and watch the maritime activities and seagulls in lovely sunshine. Next stop was Chillesford, a charming little village with an interesting church, partly built of local stone. We examined the church inside and out and then walked the short distance to Chillesford Farm pit to view deposits generally considered to be equivalent to the upper part of the Red Crag and the Norwich Crag. Once again, there were lots of fossils including some big Mya bivalves, but getting a whole one was not easy. The botany of the quarry was interesting too, and I had to admit that I left the site rather reluctantly. Our final stop on Saturday was at Neutral Farm pit near Butley, a classic Red Crag site with an exceptional bivalve fauna, long renowned. Again, certain folks could easily have spent more time at that splendid locality.

Section members at the dinner on Saturday night © Andrew Swift

The evening promised to be a bit special, as we had booked a ‘society meal’ in the Bull, to start at 8.00. This was a new initiative for the Section, usually the Saturday night of the weekend trip saw the party dispersing in little groups. The meal proved to be a great social success, and I felt a little speech was appropriate in which I proposed that, as we have no other formal meal in the Section’s programme, we should make this an annual event on the weekend excursion.

The weather on Sunday was not quite so kind initially, with some rain, but that eventually cleared. We had just 2 localities planned for the day, the first of which was Bawdsey Cliff, which used to be the finest section of Red Crag to be seen anywhere. However, the building of a protective wall had stopped erosion of fresh faces, and the whole section was deteriorating. Nevertheless, there was still much excellent geology (and ‘artificial’ geology – the man-made ‘pulhamite’ used in ornamental walling) to be seen, and there was an opportunity to see the uncomformably underlying London Clay and its phosphate nodule bed. We also combed the foreshore for Miocene pebbles, the only remaining evidence of rocks from that system, the outcrop having been eroded away. Some bits of whale bone were also found.

Fossil search at Vale Farm Quarry, Sunday 22nd June © Andrew Swift

After Bawdsey we drove off to our last stop, Vale Farm Quarry near the village of Sutton, opened in the Red Crag. This site was approached by a long sandy track, which claimed at least one victim, sunk up to the wheel arches. But that’s what a large party is for – extricating stranded vehicles! The quarry was a suitable endpiece for an excellent weekend, and featured amongst other impressive sedimentological structures, a perfect channel. If participants had not yet found any good fossils, there was no excuse here.

So at last we all dispersed, some heading for Sutton Hoo and its archaeology, others for home, after one of our best weekends ever.

 Andrew Swift