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HOLTON GRAVEL PIT
A LOOK BACK AT THE HOLTON GRAVEL PIT IN N.E. SUFFOLK HOWARD MOTTRAM & BOB MARKHAM This defunct gravel pit is located to the south-east of the village of Holton, at around OS National Grid Reference TM 404 773. The Holton Pit is not shown on the OS maps that were published up to and including 1946 but it is shown, following resurveying up to 1947, on the OS map at the 1:10,560 scale that was published in 1951. However, the pit shows on an RAF aerial photo dated 1945. It is therefore likely that the pit opened up in the 1940s for the post-World War II construction boom that gained momentum in the early 1950s. A written account of how these workings had stood in 1953 confirmed that they lay to the north of the B1123, Southwold Road, and the account added that the workings progressed approximately eastwards (Spencer, 1972 p.342-345). The pit faces at that time were described as exhibiting the Westleton Beds as dipping beds of flint gravel without thick intervening beds of sand. Cutting down into the top of the Westleton Beds were channels infilled with glacial till (Lowestoft Till). NB Spencer’s account also refers to Gipping Till and Norwich Brickearth. Today we understand that these are weathered forms of Lowestoft Till. The pit appears little changed by the time of the release of the OS 1:10,560 map published in 1958 and which incorporated resurvey updates to 1957, see Fig. 1.
Figure 1. OS 1:10,560 Scale map published 1958 (Major revisions to 1957) – not shown here to published scale and annotated with later developments
Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 58 (2022)