Ludham Borehole

In 1950 a pilot borehole was put down for exploratory water supply purposes at the Smallburgh Rural District Council waterworks at Wateringpiece Lane, Catfield, near Ludham.

Investigation of sediment samples was carried out for fossil foraminiferan content by Brian Funnell and for pollen by Colin Forbes.

[1] Sediment samples were analysed for their fossil pollen, foraminiferan and molluscan content by Richard West, Brian Funnell and Peter Norton,[2] and later by Martin Head and others for dinoflagellates[3] This research has confirmed the value of the Ludham Borehole for understanding the Pliocene and Pleistocene geology of East Anglia, and for correlation with strata of equivalent age in the North Sea basin and north-west Europe.

[10] It was noted by Norton (1977) that the molluscan fauna gave no indication of the clearly cyclical temperature changes evident from pollen and foraminiferal fossils in the Ludham sequence, and hence it was unreliable for palaeoclimatic interpretation.

[12]: 117  Further work was later conducted on Ludham pollen samples, yielding evidence for input by British rivers into the Crag sedimentary sequence in the southern North Sea basin.

[13] Dinoflagellate assemblages were analysed by Wall & Dale (1968), and were found to correspond with five facies associations in the sequence identified by West (1962).