(che)+The+Stone-1913

//photograph by courtesy of Mrs J. Aldous of Chediston Hall.//
 * 'Morainic Stone' in Chediston Hall Woods 1913**

People in the photo are Miss Margery Upcher, daughter of the Rector of Chediston and Miss Helen de Lacroix whose mother was Helen Groom. In the 1891 Census for Chediston, the de Lacroix family were resident in The Grange.



The 'stone' comprises at least three types of rock. The one in the middle is clearly 'pudding stone'. Above it is a more finely grained sedimentary rock. Both seem to have been heavily eroded. Were they eroded before or after the glacial episode?

The bottom layer could have been hollowed out deliberately, to produce the shallow grotto in which the lady on the left is partially lying.

On the other hand it may be that the whole structure was assembled from separate stones by human effort. Francis Englehart considered this structure, which he saw in the 1930s, to be a //'cairn erected as a folly, from loose portions of the perfectly natural Chedistone in Rockstone Lane' (actually in Cookley)//.

Regarding the question as to whether the structure in the photograph is a natural stratified formation that was broken away from the bed rock by a glacier moving south, requires identifying a northern conglomerate rock formation which shows the types as contiguous horizons. One such possible starting point to solve this puzzle is the Devonian Conglomerate south of the Belhelvie Fault in Scotland, which is tabulated below.
 * //Type//: Conglomerate (Devonian) ||
 * //Strata//: Sedimentary strata of the Lower Old Red Sandstone Group ||
 * //Composition//: Conglomerate, with subsidiary horizons of sandstone and clay ||
 * //Site//: Area south of the Belhelvie fault ||