Little Bentley War Memorial is located within the church of St. Mary the Virgin, a little to the right of the inner door of the south porch. The church is open to the public between the hours of 9.00am and 5pm, whereupon it locks automatically with a magnetic lock so please ensure that you do not get locked in.
The memorial is a white marble tablet inside the church, on the south wall between two gothic windows and it contains the names of twelve men, eleven who fell in World War One, and one that died in World War Two, etched in black.
The Geology Lesson
The outer walls are built of a mixture of different materials including limestone, conglomerates and even some re-used Roman bricks.
The posted co-ordinates take you to the south wall of the church where you will find a disinctive grey marble gravestone dedicated to Tingey Barbara Ann. Above and slightly to the right of this gravestone a disinctive conglomerate stone can be seen. It is one of many used in the construction of the church, but probably one of the best examples.
Puddingstone
Puddingstone is a popular but unscientific name applied to a conglomerate. A conglomerate is a rock that includes pre-existing pebbles or pieces of rock, which are cemented together in avery hard quartz cement or 'Matrix' which surrounds them. These well rounded flint pebbles are up to five centimetres (Two inches) in diameter and the sharp contrast in colour gives this type of conglomerate the appearance of a Christmas pudding, which is how it got its name.
Puddingstones are found all over the world and have even been found on Mars. Puddingstones vary from different geographical areas as they contain different rocks, have a different composition and were formed in different ways. However they all share the characteristic of rounded pebbles which contrast in colour with the usually lighter coloured matrix.
Ferricrete
A rock that has often been confused with puddingstone is ferricrete, an iron-cemented flint gravel, but the two rocks are easy to tell apart. In ferricrete the flint pebbles are cemented together by iron-stained sand, with the grains of sand still visible, whereas puddingstone is a much harder rock with the sand between the pebbles having been been completely turned to a solid mass of silica (quartz) with no visible sand grains remaining.
The Task
Please study the conglomerate stone and answer these simple questions;
1. Is the stone that you are looking at a Puddingstone or Ferricrete, and please give an explanation of your reasoning.
2. please tell me the dimensions (Height and width) of this conglometate stone.
3. The building is many hundreds of years old and much weathering can be seen. Would you say that the conglometate stone has weathered more, or less than the surrounding limestone blocks, and give a brief explanation why you have come to this conclusion.
4. COMPULSORY. Please take a picture of yourself, your GPS device or a personal item or a photo at GZ with your name visible, with the church or war memorial in the background but please be careful that your picture does not give away any answers.
Please feel free to log a find straight after you have sent me your answers. All answers will be looked at and if there are any issues I will contact you. ANY found logs without a photo and any found logs without answers submitted within a reasonable period will be deleted. This is to ensure fairness to those cachers who do complete the tasks required.
***** PLEASE NOTE IMPORTANT *****
CACHES ARE NOT ALLOWED TO BE PLACED ON ACTUAL MEMORIALS OR WITHIN THE BOUNDARY OF SUCH
AT ALL TIMES PLEASE TREAT LOCATIONS OF MEMORIALS WITH RESPECT