Shelford Geology

This map was printed by the Ordnance Survey in 1904, and was drawn up by H H Thomas, from the Maps of the Geological Survey. The scale is four miles to one inch. It may well be  a little out of date by now, but it gives a good idea of what underlies the parish.

Shelford sits in the river valley – Great and Little Shelford are not differentiated, but you can see “the triangle” of Great Shelford (High Street, Woollards Lane and Tunwells Lane) in the centre.

The Granta starts at Widdington in Essex and runs through the Shelfords. A tributary, also called the Granta, runs from Haverhill and joins up with its bigger neighbour. Originally the Cam was called the Granta, and Cambridge was actually Grantebrycge (or Granta bridge), but now they are the Cam and Cambridge.

The Haverhill Granta runs under the road through Stapleford to Sawston and past Granta Terrace (there’s a clue there!); the Widdington Granta winds down towards us from Whittlesford. They join between Great and Little Shelford, just behind Woodlands Road. There’s a brief divide just after King’s Mill, which creates a little island, and this in turn is crossed by the road between Great and Little Shelford.

The central part of the village, marked a pale brown, is of valley gravels. East of the Liverpool Street railway line is chalk. A thin tongue runs up from Shepreth Branch Junction (where the King’s Cross railway line joins the Liverpool Street line) and then towards Cherryhinton. This is chalk marl.  East of the railway line, more generally, is grey chalk, and beyond that, the outliers of the Gog Magog Hills, of middle chalk. There is an island of chalk marl stretching northwards from the church, across Rectory Farm, towards Trumpington and Haslingfield.

The valley gravels of the village tended to be used as grazing land, and up until Enclosure were often marshy, and used as common.

The lower or grey chalk is the clunch layer. “Pits opened in these beds are generally worked for clunch or wattle making”, according to Marr & Shipley. For more about clunch, see Clay Bats and Clunch.

Geology was more of an issue to villagers in 1835, at the time of the Enclosure. The village was awarded a clunch pit, on the hilltop on Granhams Road, a gravel pit where the allotments now are at the top of Stonehill Road, and a clay pit off Granhams Road (now a Pocket Park nature reserve). These pits were for the use of the community.

There were also limekilns off Babraham Road, now the site of Hilltrees. Lime was a valuable and universally  needed product used for mortar, for render and for whitewash.

Source:

A Natural History of Cambridgeshire by Marr & Shipley, 1904