Field-meeting to see Chalk, Plio-Pleistocene Sands, and Chalky Boulder Clay. Meet at the Main Works Car Park (by the tall chimney) of the Blue Circle Cement Co. (Masons/Claydon Works) at Great Blakenham (n.w. of Ipswich) on the B1113 road (grid ref. TM 121501) at 1.00 p.m.
It will be necessary to wear helmets, safety glasses, and reflective jackets; these can be provided when we meet. We shall also be required to sign an indemnity form. Wear stout footwear as it can be very muddy.
If you wish to attend this meeting you must book with Bob Markham (tel 01394 384525) by 30 April.
Field-meeting to collect fossils and hear nightingales. See the main Suffolk Naturalists Society events programme for details.
Field-meeting to study either large sandstone blocks (Lower Eocene) dredged from Harwich Harbour or London Clay in Felixstowe cliff. Which site we visit will be decided nearer the date.
Meet at the viewing area by the dock/river (just beyond Landguard Fort; grid ref. TM 283321) at 1.00 p.m. Wear stout footwear.
Project Orwell is Anglia Water's scheme to improve the sewerage system in Ipswich, and involves boring a deep tunnel in the Chalk. Learn more at this meeting. Meet at Anglia Water's Site Office at Toller Road, Ipswich, at 6 p.m. (duration about 1 hour).
If you wish to attend this meeting you must book with Bob Markham by 21 May.
Meeting to inspect the Suffolk Waste disposal Company's Foxhall Landfill site in former Red Crag and gravel pits. Meet at the weighbridge at the site entrance (TM 239 440) on the Foxhall Road east of Ipswich at 10.00 a.m. Wear stout footwear; hard hats recommended (there are seagulls at the site).
If you wish to attend this meeting you must book with Bob Markham by 2 July.
Field-meeting to collect from Norwich Crag, organised by Roderick Winyard. Meet at the entrance track to Union Farm, on the B1123 road (about 1 mile n.w. of Blythburgh) at 11.00 a.m. (TM 443 765); we drive on from there along a rough track. Bring packed lunch, and spade and sieve if you wish to dig.
Field-meeting to collect from Coralline Crag, probably in Sudbourne Park. Meet at Orford School (behind the Fire Station), TM 419 502, at 11.00 a.m; we shall be driving on from there. Bring packed lunch, and bags/boxes for collecting and spade if you are a major 'digger'.
Field-meeting led by Dr Peter Allen, to study the evolution of the Fenland landscape. Meet at the picnic area (TL 729 744), just north of Barton Mills roundabout on the A1065, at 10.15 a.m. We shall be driving on from there. Bring stout footwear and packed lunch. The field-meeting route will be on O.S. sheet 143 (1:50,000).
Percy George Hamnall Boswell was born in Woodbridge, Suffolk, and educated at Ipswich Municipal Secondary School (later Northgate High School) 1896 - 1904, where a school house was later named after him. One of his early addresses (certainly in 1909) was 'Endsleigh', Wellesley Road, Ipswich, and the family name became well-known as printers in nearby Foxhall Road.
He gained his Doctorate in about 1915 and his thesis was published as the Stratigraphy and Petrology of the Lower Eocene Deposits of the North-Eastern Part of the London Basin (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. London 1916). He was promoted from Demonstrator in Engineering Geology at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, to Professor of Geology at the Royal School of Mines at Imperial College.
From 1915 to 1919 he was Scientific Advisor (Geological) to the Ministry of Munitions. Until 1914 Britain had depended on Germany for its optical glass industry. At the start of the war it became necessary to develop home resources and Boswell undertook a study of British sands suitable for glass making. See for example his paper on Sands for Glass Making, with especial reference to optical glass (Trans. Optical Society, XVI).
In 1918 he was appointed Professor of Geology at the University of Liverpool, where his studies concentrated on the Lower Palaeozoic of North Wales. However, his work was quite widespread and the Geological Survey Memoirs on Ipswich (1927), Woodbridge, Felixstowe and Orford (1928) and Sudbury (1929) were written by him. In 1935 he visited Kenya to study the site of Louis Leakey's 'Kanam Jaw' and he clashed with Leakey (Nature 135 and 138) in what has been called 'The Battle of Boswell on the field of Kanam'.
Percy Boswell died in 1960 in Ruthin Castle Clinic, Denbighshire, North Wales. He was cremated at Colwyn Bay and his ashes scattered over the waters of the Great Orme River. His last local paper was a Note on the Geology of the Bobbitshole area, Ipswich, in the Transactions of the Suffolk Naturalists' Society, 1958.
A feature and photograph in the East Anglian Daily Times 27 October 1998, titled 'Tombstone is from a meteorite', brought a good story to my attention. According to the Essex Review of 1907, Dedham ploughman Edward Ward one day ploughed up a large boulder in a field and in the due course of time it became his tombstone in the cemetery at St Mary's Church, Dedham. It later seems to have gained a reputation as a meteorite, hence the newspaper article. I inspected the boulder the day after the article appeared, and found it to be a sarsen sandstone, of the type found locally in the 'Reading Sand'. I communicated this to David Lampard of Ipswich Museum, who kindly undertook to inform the East Anglian, see 'Not from outer space', letters, 7 November 1998.
Sadly this American magazine ceased publication in August 1998, which issue gave no hint that it was the last. See the Kalmback Press web site.
In the 1983 paper by C. R.Bristow 'The stratigraphy and structure of the Crag of mid-Suffolk, England' (Proc. Geol. Assoc., 94, 1 - 12), my comments (pages 9 and 10) on the faunas from the Woolpit and Hitcham boreholes were transposed, and I hope that this correction is better late than never! In addition the paper records Spisula subtruncata from Hitcham (by D. Garnham); I did not see this species, which is particularly characteristic of the Norwich Crag, and I stand by my comment in the article that the fauna is characteristic of the Red Crag.
Bob Markham