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Re: mud holes and salagrams
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Dave2 wrote:
such a long time gone,but any one see the large lens shape stones in the woods near those jcb swallowing mud wells. trow lane?tockenham wick area.they are beautiful simetrical and seem to attract lightning.x


Are you thinking of the Wootton Bassett mud springs - there is lots of fairly current information about them on the internet but I also found an article from 'Geology Today' published in 1988.

There was this little extract which put me in mind of your post:-

I have found lots of fossils in the seam such as ammonites, oysters, and even a vertebra from an animal's backbone. Small brass-coloured ammonites may be from the mudsprings because I found them in the stream only downstream from the springs, where they may have been winnowed from the mud poured into the stream. Some of these fossils have already given some fame to the area because they proved useful in the British Geological Survey's ongoing update of the country's strata. Also, the B.G.S. drilled a borehole near the PMH, Swindon, specifically to unravel the local geology. The seam of fossils includes the Inconstans Bed named after the odd-shaped brachipod Torquirhynchia Inconstans which occurs only in this thin seam of strata.

The fossils probably have no bearing on the cause of the mudsprings, yet they add some extra interest to the area. A common misapprehension concerns lots of shell found in the mud dredged from the canal. These are not fossils but are the leftovers from canal boatmens' meals! They seemed to live on clams possibly kept alive in salty water, brought from fishmarkets.


(PMH was the local hospital, now demolished)


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tjj
Posted by tjj
3rd February 2011ce
21:21

In reply to:

mud holes and salagrams (Dave2)

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