This name has been given to extensive forest beds, containing much carbonized wood.
The deposit prevails very generally along the Norfolk coast, and may be instructively examined at Hasborough, Bacton, Mundsley, Trimingham, and Cromer.
At Bacton extensive sections are laid bare after high tides. They are mostly formed of black peaty earth, which may be separated into thin layers, and has generally an aluminous taste, and abounds with pyrites.
At Bacton the depth of these sections, from the top of the cliff, is about five feet; at Ostend, between Bacton and Hasborough, about thirty, and at Mundsley, one hundred feet.
These deposits are occasionally mixed with masses of red sand, containing pipes of hard clay.
This formation presents the appearance of a wood, having been overthrown and crushed in situ; for after strong north-west winds, the stumps of the trees may be seen really standing, with their strong roots extended, and intermingling with each other. In the winter of 1840–41, Mr. Green measured some of these trunks, which were then exposed about a foot from the root.—One measured five feet eleven inches round, and the other five feet.
Whilst at Bacton this bed is formed of black peaty earth, at Ostend it is mixed with a greenish sand. Mr. Lyell speaks of that at Hasborough as “laminated blue clay, about one foot and a half in thickness, part of the clay being bituminous, and inclosing compressed branches and leaves of trees.”
Mr. R. C. Taylor, in his Geology of Eastern Norfolk, observes of the deposit generally:—“It consists of forest peat, containing fir cones and fragments of bones; in others of woody clay; and elsewhere, of large stools of trees, standing thickly together, the stems appearing to have been broken off about eighteen inches from the base.”
The Rev. James Layton, cited by Mr. Fairholme in his Geology, states, in a letter, “the line of crushed wood, leaves, grass, &c., frequently forming a bed of peat, extends just above low water mark. About this stratum, numerous remains of mammalia are found, the horns and bones of at least four kinds of deer, the horse, the ox, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and elephant. These fossil remains are found at Hasborough and its neighbourhood, on the denuded clay shore. At Mundsley, they are found in the cliff. This stratum may be seen as the underlying formation, along the whole line of beach from Eccles to Mundsley.”
At Cromer, Mr. Simons has observed, beneath the drift, several feet below high water mark, a bed of lignite, in which were found the seeds of plants, &c. He also observed ten or more trees, in the space of half an acre, exposed below the cliffs eastward of that town, the stumps being a few inches, all less than a foot, in vertical height, some no less than nine or ten feet in girth, the roots spreading from them on all sides, throughout a space of twenty feet in diameter.