The Coprolite industry on the Deben

Coprolites are found in our region within the local crag and running in seams beneath it. Our Red Crag is the remains of the sea bed which covered this area some three million years ago. Some of the Coprolites are animal remains from Whales, Sharks and other creatures whilst the remainder is composed chiefly of calcium phosphate, along with minor quantities of organic matter. The name is derived from the Greek words KOPROS (dung) and LITHOS (stone). Coprolites are classified as trace fossils, as opposed to body fossils, as they give evidence for the animal’s diet. There is an association between Coprolites and Dinosaurs but given the Crag is three million years old and Dinosaurs were up to about sixty-five million years ago this is mistaken, at least in this area. ¹⁾GeoSuffolk leaflet on Red Crag

The first recorded use of  Suffolk Red Crag as fertiliser comes from John Kirby of Wickham Market in his Suffolk Traveller of 1764:-

“In a Farmer’s Yard in Levington, close on the left as you enter from Levington into the said Chapel Field of Stratton Hall, was dug the first Crag of Shell that have been found so useful for improving the land in this and other Hundreds in the neighbourhood. For though it appears from Books of Agriculture, that the like Manure has long since been used in the West of England, it was not used here till this Discovery was casually made by one Edmund Edwards, about the year 1718. This Man, being covering a Field with Muck out of his yard , and wanting a load of two to finish it, carried some of the Soil that laid near the Muck, tho’ it looked to him no better than Sand; but observing the Crop to be best where he laid that, he was from thence encouraged to carry more of it the next year; and the success he had , encouraged others to do the like”

It was not until the mid 19^th C. that the industry began to flourish. Mr W.G.T. Packard, who was Vice Chairman of Fisons Ltd., wrote:-

“ In a memoir of my grandfather’s life (Edward Packard ,senior, as he was known in Ipswich), there is a note to the effect that he was grinding bones for use as fertilizers in 1843, and that very shortly afterwards he obtained some coprolites and ground them in a flour mill, which was leased to him at Snape. About this time, J.B. Lawes invented superphosphate, which was obtained by dissolving the phosphate found within the coprolites, or other phosphatic material, in sulphuric acid.

My grandfather soon after, started making superphosphate in Ipswich, where he moved in about 1850, and set up mills for grinding coprolites, which he shipped round the coast to other manufacturers. In about 1857 he started a complete factory at Bramford near Ipswich, including a sulphuric acid works, which was the first complete superphosphate works in the country”.

Phosphatic manures were essential for growing crops, particularly root crops whose large bulbous roots are close to the surface soil. As farmers depended largely on beet, swedes and turnips for winter feed, they felt compelled to search for additional manures to ensure an adequate return. Coprolites could be raised for 8-10 shillings a ton and sold at 24 shillings a ton. The manufactured phosphate sold at £6-£7 a ton. This was about half the price of the other popular fertilizer of the time, guano (phosphate-rich bird droppings).

The industry developed rapidly and extensively, to create employment for hundreds of local people. It prospered so much that by 1877, 10,000 tons of coprolite were dispatched annually from the quaysides of the Deben and the Orwell to various parts of the United Kingdom. Veins and pockets were found on most farms in the district, and as much as £20 worth was often dug from a cottager’s garden. Mr Wainwright of Foxhall, the Woltons of Newbourne, the Wallers and Kerseys of Waldringfield and Sutton, the Johnsons of Boynton all had pits on their farms and continued working them until the early 1890s. Some of the wealth generated from Coprolite mining was used by Rev. Waller to repair the Church and build the school at Waldringfield. By 1869 Joseph Fison, Noble & Co. and William Colchester were advertising themselves as grinders of coprolite. Edward Packard was well established at Bramford. Prentice Bros. of Stowmarket ground coprolite in a mill on the Stowupland Road.

The main jobs connected with the industry were digging, sifting, washing, sorting, carting and loading. The younger and stronger men did the digging and loading. Older men, past their prime, had the job of washing. Small boys, often not more than ten, did the sorting for which they were paid about three shillings a week. When strong enough to carry a four stone (25Kg) tin of coprolite they were promoted to sifters and carriers, getting an increase of two shillings in their weekly pay packet. Men could earn then as much as 16 shillings a week in the pits—a good wage in the 1890s. Men in other jobs were jealous of the coproliters, who had a comparatively high wage and a short day. They started at 8.00 am and finished at 4.00 pm, with a break of an hour for lunch. But they had to work very hard as everything was paid for by the yard, hod or load.

The opening of a new pit was no small job in the days when everything was done by hand. Shovels and picks were the order of the day and several days were spent digging until they struck a seam. Whilst small pockets were sometimes found near the surface, they usually had to dig down from thirty to forty feet before striking the main seam, which generally lay at the bottom of the crag and on top of the clay. The Foxhall pit is said to have been the deepest in the country, varying from forty to sixty feet.

A coprolite pit was roughly V-shaped in pattern, with shelves from three to six feet wide running along the “ face” side where the extension was taking place. As all work was taken by the yard, everything was measured in that dimension. The men worked in gangs of four, each gang keeping to its own “kench” as the shelf was usually called. A gang was expected to move fourteen loads a day, each load weighing a quarter of a ton. The boy sifters and carriers helped the men at the bottom of the pit, where they had reached the coprolite. Two boys were allocated to each man, spending all their time sifting and carrying. Taking a four stone tin of coprolite, shoulder high, to the top of the pit was not a bad performance for a boy in his early teens.

Inexperienced men, when first entering the pits, were kept to the lower “kenches” where they had little fear of falling from the planks when shifting the soil. Planks were laid, supported on “horses”, from one side of the pit to the other, and over these the soil had to be moved in wheelbarrows. As men became accustomed to the work in the pits they were allowed to work on the higher “kenches” where the task was naturally riskier. Wheeling a barrow load of soil on a nine-inch plank, over a pit some thirty to fifty feet deep, was no easy task, needing strong arms, a sure foot, and a steady nerve.

As soon as the coprolite was taken on top, the washing began. That was an old man’s job when he became too old for the pit. A long tank, some thirty feet in length, was specially provided for the job. The coprolites, along with a certain amount of dirt and bones, were shovelled into sieves which, when full, were placed on a ledge in the tank, just under the surface of the water; to each sieve was fastened a long pole, which the washer pushed backwards and forwards until the stones were clean. When there was a shortage of water, in or near the pit, the washing was done at the quayside before loading.

After washing, the coprolites etc. were tipped out on the sorting table, where small boys stood alongside ready for action. With a keen eye and deft fingers they picked out anything and everything that would not pass as coprolite with the manure merchants. To avoid cutting their hands on the sharp-edged shells, they used a wooden scraper to push the coprolite from side to side, whilst with their left hands, they picked out the refuse and threw it over their shoulders.

Having been washed and sorted, the coprolites were then ready for dispatch to the manure factories. Where the pits were situated near the Deben and Orwell, the coprolite was carted to the nearest quayside. Those further inland, such as the Foxhall pits, sent it directly by road to the Ipswich docks, where the manure merchants had their grinding mills.

When loading began at the quayside, all work in the pit had to stop, for every available man and boy was required for the job. It was indeed a busy day, for 100 tons of coprolite had to be moved between morning and night. Boys did the “felling” and men the running. To avoid stoppages, “two-way” gangplanks were laid from beach to barge. The coprolite was shovelled into tins, each weighing one hundredweight (50Kg) when full. And so all day long, except a short break at noon, the boys were “felling”, while the men were running up and down the gangplanks with their wheelbarrows.

Newbourne, Waldringfield and Hemley took full advantage of the barges on the river. In those days barges were always coming and going, bringing in manure from London, and taking away and cattle feed, coprolite and cement. The picture shows a barge on Waldringfield beach unloading London’s muck hitched to the mooring post which no longer exists.  In the nineteenth century, there was a mooring post for barges on the beach which can be seen in the picture with a barge unloading muck from London.

Packards had a fleet of barges appropriately named Fossil, Ammonite and Nautilus. These will be included in a future article on Waldringfield and the Deben. There is large excavation next to the steps up to the dinghy park which was probably a coprolite pit. We know of several others around the village.

The coprolite industry gradually declined during the late 1880s and early 1890s. Coprolite mining may have been ended by the 1893 quarries act which required safety precautions for pits deeper than 25 ft. Pits in the Waldringfield area appear to have closed by 1895 and for a year or two afterwards, much time was spent in trying to level them out, particularly those that lay in the middle in the middle of a field. Other reasons for the decline and subsequent closure of the local pits were most of the seams had been worked out, also  most of the seams had been worked out; secondly, deposits of phosphate on a very much larger scale were being opened up in many parts of the world and these could be bought more cheaply. As for the coproliters themselves, having earned good wages, they had little desire to return to agriculture, which was then passing through acute depression. Many of the younger and fitter men left to join the army, navy or police. Some of the older men, who had accumulated savings, invested their capital in small business rather than return to the farm work. As for the landowners and tenant farmers, they again settled down to routine agriculture.

Michael Atkinson

Waldringfield History Group

See Bag Seals