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THE villages of Fladbury and Cropthorne on the river Avon lie in the area drained by the Severn, the most westerly of the three largest river Systems in England. The Avon is the most important natural feature of the district, and has been so since before either village existed. It carved out the valley, made it fertile, and rendered it fit for the habitation of man. It is a constant element which appears and reappears throughout the history of both villages.
The vale that lies between the Malverns, Cotswolds and Lickey Hills was excavated during the Tertiary and subsequent ages, between 19 million and 55 million years ago. Both villages are on the lowest Jurassic strata, Lower Lias, of which much of Worcestershire is composed. It was laid down about 145 million years ago, and is therefore of no great age when compared with the Malvern hills, igneous rocks which are at least 2,000 million years old, and among the oldest rocks in England.
The Lower Lias, which is about 950 ft. thick, consists of limestones overlaid by a mass of blue and grey clays which in their turn contain occasional bands of limestone. The "basement" limestones are exposed in places and can be seen near Fladbury, at Evesham, and at Cleeve Prior. In some districts the stiff clay has been covered by sands and gravels, making it easier to work and suitable for fruit-growing. From time to time excavations in formations of this kind at Fladbury and Evesham have produced remains of the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, the mammoth and other mammals. They are the vestiges of much larger deposits made by glaciers and rivers during the Great Ice Age and since washed away. Geologists conclude from this and similar evidence that there was an interglacial period, when animals and Stone Age men flourished.
The ice sheet which covered the whole of Britain north of a line drawn roughly from the Thames estuary to the Bristol Channel, at the end of what is known as the Tertiary era (about 20 million years ago), also left boulders from the Welsh mountains, of which one is still to be seen outside Fladbury Church. Another very similar boulder is at Bredon, not many miles away, but none farther south, for the southern edge of the ice sheet was in this area.
When trying by means of a borehole to find drinking water near Cropthorne Mill, Louis Barrow discovered that while the mill itself stands on clay, which is at least 40 ft. thick, there is at a distance of about 230 ft. from the lower pound a gravel bed only 18 ft. below the surface, which yielded a pure but opalescent water (see diagram).
