122
WELLS ON FOWLNESS ISLAND.
The correct use of the words loam and clay contrasts
favourably with the modern inversion of the relative use of
those terms prevalent in East Anglia, and the correct spelling of
the name Fowlness rebukes the retrogression of the official
orthography to the spell-as-you like system of the Tudor and
earlier periods. With "fowls" in place of "foules," Fowlness
retains its original connotation.
The account before us gives the fullest details on record of
the composition of the alluvium. The soft dark-blue and black
mud, frequently flowing into the borehole (and I gather that it
did so directly the more coherent brown bed above it was
pierced), probably indicates the site as a point on one of the
ancient creeks dividing the area. Such a creek is known to
cross the churchyard along the frontage of the church ; the
building stands on firm sand, but to the south the surface of the
sand slopes rapidly below a bed of soft blue silty mud, the bottom
of which was not reached in the graves nearest the church-door
(my father's being one such). Yet directly beyond, in front of
the door, the firm sand is again found, rising close to the
surface, so that graves there had to be exceptionally shallow,
the water-logged sand not otherwise standing long enough for
the interment, and funerals having been delayed for re-digging.
Visitors will recollect the two pathways meeting at the church-
door ; these separate graves in the silt-bed on either side, and in
sand in the intervening angle. Doubtless there are on the island
many such old channels, obliterated by. the subsequent deposit
of loam or clay over the level sands they once intersected.
I am a little sceptical as to the bed of supposed flints at the
base of the alluvial deposits, and inclined to suspect that it is a
seam of Septaria, or cement-stones, which by checking the
erosion of the sea-floor remained as a sheet of rock, to vex the
well-sinker of the future by preventing his "pluggs" from being
"drove," or his spade used in excavation of the solid London
Clay below for a water-tight foundation to the brick-and-puddle
steining of a dug well. The action of sea-water on Septaria
seems in some way to indurate them, just as fossil shells from a
beach are less friable than those obtained inland or above tide-
mark on a cliff. A similar sheet of "flint-stones" is recorded
in the newer account to be dealt with presently, and as it is at
the base of a thick bed of shingle ("beach"), its continuity of