Okus Quarry was a very important place to me. For as long as I can remember I have been interested in fossils, rocks and minerals, probably as a result of reading my encyclopedias (see the Schooling and Education page). I was therefore in my element when I discovered Okus Quarry, which was then a collection of stone pits, some of them filled with water. In later years the site was built over and became the Princess Margaret Hospital.
It was a great joy to me to put on a pair of Wellington Boots (large size, my older brother's hand-me-downs, as usual) and walk from Emlyn Square up Kingshill to Okus Quarry. My main task then was to gather what fossils I could, especially the Ammonites, and try to figure out how I could get some of the larger specimens home. There was no shortage of fossils at that time, so much so, that many people who lived in Old Town had set them in their garden walls, where they made an interesting feature.
As I continued to read my encyclopedias and had begun to get a vague idea of what all these fossils meant, I tried to imagine the bygone scene and what the area was like when the fossils were living creatures. This was difficult because I had little idea of what it was like under the sea. My main source of information on this topic was from Walt Disney's film, Pinocchio, when Pinocchio went under the sea to look for his Father. This didn't really help much at all though.
I then found out, probably from a visit to the Swindon Museum, that the whole Swindon area was a part of the Jurassic System of rocks. Not many people knew that in those days but I was aware that Dinosaurs lived in Jurassic times and that was enough for me.
After my fossil collecting was done for the time being, and if a sunset was in the offing, I would wade out in my Wellington Boots through the shallow water which filled several of the pits. This had to be done very slowly or the water would slop over inside my boots and I would get wet feet. The trick was to get to a point where the water was just level with the top of my boots. Then I would quietly stand there admiring the reflections of the colours of the setting sun on the water all around me. A few minutes later I could easily travel back in time, so to speak, and imagine that I was on the shore of this "Jurassic lake" at sunset. It was a short step then to imagine the huge shapes of Dinosaurs coming down to the edge of the lake to drink. Sometimes I quite frightened myself when the sun went down too rapidly while I was day-dreaming and plunged me unexpectedly into deep gloom.
Often though, the usual end to these sessions was much more abrupt. Being a stone-pit, the floor of the "lake" was covered with smaller pieces of rock, and these small pieces were very unstable. Standing as I was with the water up to the top of my boots it would happen that a piece would shift and I would feel a sharp sting of cold, as, with a gurgle, the water poured into one of my boots. In an effort to right the situation I would inevitably upset the delicate balance of the other, which would fill up too. It was then a matter of floundering back to dry land with very heavy boots full of water.
On dry land again I removed my boots and poured out all the water I could. Then came the long walk back to Emlyn Square, carrying all the stone I could and squelching at each step of the way. How my Mother put up with it all I don't know, but I am glad she did because I learnt a great deal, one way or another.
My elder brother, Doug, eventually helped me by making me a "bogey," a sort of go-cart made from a slice of tree which gave it a rounded contour underneath. He covered it with some old black leather, courtesy of an old GWR carriage, and there it was. It was as heavy as lead but I added to it by screwing another old pram wheel horizontally on the top after removing the tyre. A rope fixed around the rim and taken to the front axle made some sort of steering possible but it took a lot of trial and error. This promised to be my way of getting those large specimens back home from Okus Quarry.
There was an unforseen snag of course. Coming down Kingshill laden with great chunks of fossil-filled rock it was easy for the whole thing to get completely out of control. I simply was not strong enough to hold it back. The only way I could get home safely was to keep crashing it into the side every few yards. This wasn't very clever so I gave up on trying to get the larger specimens back home.
Home address of this page: http://www.johnw55.freeuk.com/village
Page updated 21 July 2008