The landscape and Find out more of Mousehold Heath • Visit the Geological Society of website: Mousehold Heath has been valued resource for the www.norfolkgeology.co.uk people of for over a thousand years. • Find out about the Heathland Habitat Action Plan at Cartloads of its sand, gravel, lime and flint have gone Norfolk Biodiversity Partnership’s website: into building the city. www.norfolkbiodiversity.org Mousehold Heath today is the last remnant of a once • Find out about managing the Heath at Norwich City larger tract of open heathland founded on Ice Age Council website: www.norwich.gov.uk sands and gravels. In the 19th century it was a rolling and hummocky expanse of heather and bracken, much painted by artists; it was dotted with quarry pits and hollows, and home to distinctive heathland wildlife. Exploring

A view across Mousehold Heath, Mousehold Heath 1810, by John Sell Cotman EARTH

• Find out more about conserving Norfolk’s Earth heritage HERITAGE via the Norfolk Geodiversity Partnership website: https://sites.google.com/site/norfolkgeodiversity/ TRAIL

Acknowledgements Mousehold Heath Earth Heritage Trail is a partnership Photo © Trustees of the British Museum Photo © Trustees project of Norwich City Council, Norfolk Biodiversity The open Heath was maintained by the nibbling Partnership and Norfolk Geodiversity Partnership. We teeth of sheep and , by quarrying and gratefully acknowledge funding and other support from the continuing removal of firewood. In 1886 it was Norfolk Biodiversity Project Fund, the Geological Society of Norfolk and the Mousehold Heath Conservators. Our declared an outdoor leisure space for the City. special thanks go to Stephen Little for layout and design. A few areas of original heathland remain today, Picture credits carefully maintained for their fragile wildlife value. Cover photos : Tree cover has increased over the last 70 years, so that • Gravel pit © British Geological Survey P205584 most of the historic heath has now become wooded. • Flint axe Courtesy Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, Most of the old quarries are now shady pits and dells. 1935 The Heath is now a designated County Wildlife Site. • Fossil jaw © British Geological Survey P779768 Mousehold Heath has a fascinating Earth heritage. All other photos © TD Holt-Wilson unless otherwise attributed. Imagine peeling back its surface layers and discovering the million year-old stories in its rocks and sediments. We invite you to explore the ‘geodiversity’ of the Heath, the processes which have shaped it over deep time, and its history of mineral extraction. This leaflet introduces the Trail, and further information will be made available on the Web. INTRODUCTION 1 St James Hill 2 St James’ Hollow The Earth Heritage Trail introduces you to the This is an outlying This impressive hole in the ground is one of the geological history of Mousehold Heath, and over two spur of the biggest chalk and gravel pits in the Norwich area. centuries of quarrying. Thanks to its sandy soils, the Mousehold The Chalk is a limestone laid down in tropical seas Heath is a valuable example of heathland plateau, giving during the period. St James’ Hollow is a habitat, with a range of fascinating wildlife. wonderful views of Site of Special Scientific Interest, designated for its Norwich and the The Trail geological value as one of the best places in Britain Wensum valley. to find the fossil remains of Mosasaurus. There are 18 points of interest; some are The valley began to marked with waymark posts. You can form at the end of discover them in any order; each one links the Anglian glacial period, some 425,000 years ago. the landscape and wildlife of the Heath Mousehold Heath is underlain by a thick stack of glacial Trail post today with its deep geological history. and Crag sediments. A borehole near Britannia The map overleaf shows the location of the posts, and Barracks recorded 26 m (107 ft) of sand and gravel other information such as car parks and public toilets. resting on Chalk. St James’ Hill is a The landscape history of Mousehold good place to see one of the dry 75 million years ago - Part of a warm, tropical sea in The Mosasaurus could valley landforms of reach 15 m (50 ft) in length. This the Cretaceous period. The Chalk is deposited, and Mousehold. Dry powerful predator resembled a sort now forms the local bedrock. valleys formed in of marine crocodile with flippers. Artwork © David Waterhouse 75 to 0.7 million - Any sediment deposited during permeable soils this time period has been removed by erosion. Sheep’s Sorrel Rumex acetosella during the Ice Age, There is interesting geology in the south pit. You can and Cypress-leaved Plait-moss perhaps when see Chalk beneath the basement bed of the Norwich 2 to 0.7 million - The Norwich area is near the Hypnum cupressiforme climate was wetter Crag, a sandy marine deposit laid down about 2 western edge of the North Sea in a cool temperate and ground-water levels were higher, or in permafrost million years ago. climate. Marine sands, gravels and clays of the Crags conditions, when the ground was frozen so it could be are deposited on top of the Chalk. A boulder bed of large flint nodules was eroded out eroded by meltwaters. 630,000 to 425,000 years ago - The Norwich area is of the sea-bed by tidal currents. A similar The sandy soils of St James’ Hill support heathland over-run by two ice-sheets. Sands, gravels and clays environment can be seen today where Chalk rock is wildlife. Gorse and bramble scrub are being controlled are deposited beneath the ice or by meltwater, forming exposed along the Norfolk coast, as at West Runton. to encourage other plants to flourish. Interesting bee a thick stack of glacial sediments at Mousehold. and wasp species have been recorded from St James’ 420,000 to 10,000 - Through several cycles of warm Hill. It is part of Mousehold Heath County Wildlife Site. and cold climatic periods, Mousehold begins to take shape as an upland area on the edge of the Wensum St James’ Hollow circa 1910 valley. In cold phases it is part of the permafrost zone with a tundra climate. Neanderthals visit the area in milder periods. Humans of our own species recolonise Norfolk from about 12,000 years ago as the climate warms up. 10,000 to present day - Mousehold becomes forested. Human impacts lead to the development of heathland and sandy podzol soils. Quarrying for chalk, flint, sand, A section through the early Pleistocene sea bed: gravel and brickearth alters the natural shape of the land. sands and clays of the Norwich Crag Basement Bed overlying an undulating surface of Chalk bedrock Courtesy Jarrold & Sons Ltd 3 Upper Birch Walk 9 Hooper Lane brick field 16 Mousehold Stone Pit Company quarry

A small gravel A hundred years ago The brick kiln at The pitch & putt pit near the this was a busy Hooper Lane was golf course and top of Birch complex of brick pits demolished in the hummocky Walk shows and kilns. Brickearth the 1950s. area round some of the lies beneath the Valley Drive coarse glacial layers of sand and were a big sand gravels which gravel on Stone Pit No. 2, 1907, showing and gravel underlie the Mousehold. The the Prison and Britannia quarry, active Barracks in the distance. high ground of north-western until the 1950s. the Heath. These are thought to have been part of a slopes of the Heath Photo courtesy Norfolk Heritage Centre ‘sandur’ or at the end of the Anglian were quarried away, 17 Valley Drive Neanderthal findspot glacial period, perhaps 430,000 years ago. Tree and two picturesque clearance here will benefit heathland wildlife. windmills were In 1935 a Neanderthal hand-axe was found in a gravel destroyed. In the Photo: Eastern Daily Press © Archant Norfolk pit beside Valley Drive. It was probably made during 4 Lower Birch Walk later 19th century a large Hoffmann kiln was built, the Devensian cold period, perhaps 60,000 or 42,000 A small sand pit shows geology allowing bricks to be made continuously, as the fire years ago. The landscape would have been like the from an older, deeper layer of burned in rotation through a series of chambers. Brick steppe heathland of northern Scandinavia today. Mousehold. Gravel is overlain by making continued here until after World War 2. alternating layers of yellow sand 10 Vinegar Pond gravel pits and brown, clayey sand. The gravel was deposited by a meltwater Sand and gravel has been dug on this part of the Heath stream flowing across a glacial since the . Quarrying stopped here after outwash plain, while the sandy 1880. Fresh-looking hummocky ground nearby is layers would have been deposited probably the result of wartime dumping of soil. Vinegar in quieter water - perhaps a lagoon. These layers may Pond is a wet hollow left by the date from a glaciation older than the Anglian. quarrying and wartime

manoeuvres, fed only Artwork © Beverly Curl Mousehold Lane 5 Gilman Road bank by rainwater. A Neanderthal family Gilman Road bank group in Long Valley,

12 e

is the best place Vinegar 11 v c.42,000 years ago. Oak Avenue 6 i

10 r Road Pond on the Heath to D t Heartsease Lane u see the glacial 8 n 7 t s sands and gravels G e 14 ilm h a C Gurney Road which form the n alley R ng V 12 o Lo 13 main body of Oak Avenue ad brick pit 5 Mousehold. Three Birch Walk 15 cuttings have been Until 1880 this leafy dell known 4 made in the bank, as ‘Deep Hole’ was a scene of Pitch & Putt allowing us to see what the environment close to the industrial activity, as the glacial 3 16 ice front was like. Chaotically-bedded gravels alternate brickearths of Mousehold Heath Valley Drive with sands and thin clay seams. They were probably were quarried here for brick making. d a 18 laid down on an outwash plain with slabs of dead ice, The sides of the valley made it easy o R 17 y and unstable gravel bodies slumping into pools or for the diggers to get at the e n valuable and clay beds. r streams of meltwater. u Beech Drive

G 6 Gilman Road brick pits 13 Long Valley 18 Trail point of interest P Car parking G T The sandy, glacial clays Long Valley is the best example of Trail waymark post Public toilets Britannia Road of Mousehold can be a dry valley on the Heath, formed Principal footpaths B Bus stop (Route 11) fired to make red in the past when groundwater levels © Crown Copyright and H Heathland bricks. These so-called were higher or the ground was database right 2012. restoration area ‘mussel bricks’ were frozen. It meanders for almost a Ordnance Survey 100019747. made here in vast mile, heading westwards from 2 quantities until the late Heartsease Lane towards the 18 Beech Drive hills & hollows 19th century. There Wensum valley, and has several The hummocky land round Beech Drive is a legacy of was a major brick field A map from 1881 tributary dry valleys. Its natural centuries of digging for glacial sand, gravel and near Gilman Road; the shows that the shape has been altered by over 1 brickearth. Quarrying stopped in the area north of the site was landscaped brick field included the centuries by quarrying and rabbits. Drive in the 1880s, when this part of the Heath and now lies beneath eight kilns and a deep well. Long Valley - became a 'People’s Park'; it continued in the 20th the Sports Ground. Courtesy Norfolk Record Office N/EN 26/1 a dry valley on century on land to the south. The sports ground was Mousehold Heath once a brick field. The massive mound in the woods is 7 The Lazar House the butts for a rifle range, used by the army in Victorian Most of the building times before the area became thickly wooded. materials used in the walls of the Lazar House at Gilman 11 & 15 Heathland restoration areas Road would have been sourced from Mousehold, © Crown copyright and database right 2012. Ordnance Survey 100019747. 200 years ago, Mousehold was open heathland with including the flint stone very few trees. Local people dug for sand and gravel, 14 Chestnut Drive brick pit rubble and builders’ lime. herded livestock and collected firewood. These The wall in the south- A brick pit was sited here in the 19th century, but digging traditional land-uses ceased once the Heath became western corner is buttressed ceased after 1880, when the Heath became designated a public park, and trees began to invade. Today, the with ‘mussel bricks’. The as a 'People's Park'. This is the best place to see the Conservators and Wardens are working together to door frames are made of torrent gravels of Mousehold Heath. Look high up on the restore as much of the open heath as possible; this imported Barnack limestone eastern rim of the pit: the plateau surface of the Heath work will benefit a wide variety of species. transported by boat from the Peterborough area. has a capping of coarse gravel containing large flint cobbles. They were laid down on a glacial outwash plain . 8 Gilman Road lime kiln during the Anglian glacial period, about 430,000 years ago. Powerful meltwater streams emerged from the ice The gardens of the block of flats in Gilman Road front and dumped their bedload of sand and stones. conceal a lime kiln. This was the last working lime kiln © Nick Owens in Norwich (1968). The kiln was built about 200 years Sand wasp Regenerating Small Copper Ammophila heather Calluna Lycaena phlaeas ago as a ring-shaped sabulosa vulgaris growing underground on cleared ground structure. Chalk was ‘burnt’ (calcined) here to make builders’ lime. It is preserved below Coarse gravels in a modern © Dave Riseborough © Robin Stevenson © Nick Owens Lindsley Peter © ground, marked by a Bell Heather Heath Plait-moss White-tailed circle of gravel and glacial outwash plain at Sólheimajökull, Iceland. Erica cinerea Hypnum Bumblebee

shrubbery. Photo © Ólafur Ingólfsson http://notendur.hi.is/oi jutlandicum Bombus lucorum