I.—The Danbury Gravels

Abstract

Danbury stands on a gravel-capped plateau in Mid-Essex, five miles east of Chelmsford. The gravel is part of a once largersheet and contains a variety of rocks foreign to the district. It was therefore naturally at first regarded as a glacial gravel. This view was adopted by S. V. Wood, jun. (e.g. 1867, p. 12; 1870, p. 61), by the Rev. O. Fisher (1868, p. 98), on the Geological Survey Map (Sheet 1, N.E., 1871), and by Mr. Whitaker (1889, p. 279). Sir Joseph Prestwich regarded the Danbury gravels (1890, p. 135) as Bagshot pebble-beds invaded by some glacial agent, and the late H. B. Woodward (1903, p. 15) described them as the wreck in Glacial times of an older gravel.