Go with the Flow

One of my main problems was persuading people to let me see the samples of the H-glaze in their possession.   Despite numerous requests, the only samples I eventually managed to examine were those described in the original report.   From the outset, there were a great many apocryphal claims about this deposit.   One claim that particularly intrigued me was that, where the glaze was thick, it seemed to have flowed across the ground.

In the one sample supplied by Busty Taylor, shown in Fig 5, there was, at first sight, an indication that this claim might be true because a deposit seemed to have been laid or plastered on top of the substrate.  Also, as I described in the original report, this deposit was composed of a mixture of iron, its oxides and fragments of chalk and silica, presumably from the substrate or its surroundings.  It was not immediately clear how a fluid agglomerate could have been created and it became critically important to find out how this deposit could have formed and how thick it had been.  So, I approached Taylor again with a request to see one large sample that he is known to have taken from the field. I both asked him personally and wrote a detailed letter making this request and giving my reasons. Unfortunately, he saw fit not to cooperate or even reply.

In an attempt to finally prove or disprove the veracity of the claims regarding the mobility and thickness of the deposit, I asked Peter Sørensen, the only other witness to the find, to describe, in as much detail as possible, the sample in Taylor's possession.   During this recorded conversation, Peter stated the following:

"It was very thick and looked almost like honey that had frozen. It was reddish and a mixture of tones and colours.  At one point, it was like a big puddle of it on the ground.   Busty found it with a magnet. ......  Busty discovered the big splotch where Rob Irving said he had finished and threw the whole bucket onto the ground - whatever was left in the cup or bucket, whatever it was.   The magnet yanked on this.   It looked so different that I had not noticed it before.  When we pulled it up out of the ground, it came up as a big chunk.  It broke into two or three pieces.  It had soaked into the earth. It really did fit Rob Irving's description very well. .......At the thick part, it may have been more than a millimetre (thick), tapering to where it began to blend with the soil. ...   and the thickness of its penetration down into the soil was maybe as much as three quarters of an inch. ....   It was only in one location.   It was in one of the circles."

At this point, it is worth repeating Rob Irving's description of events on the night when he claims to have created the H-glaze.  He has stated that he had the iron powder in a paper bag and that, after distributing some of the powder, the bag became wet from the drizzle and began to disintegrate. Eventually, unable to continue, he threw the remaining contents of the bag onto the ground.

There is a striking correlation between these two accounts.  This iron powder readily absorbs water to form slurry and could not have been retained in a bag.  The fine material could easily have penetrated into cracks in the ground and formed a congealed mass as it rusted.   Also, I now suspect that the large 'splotch' described by Peter was the origin of the allusion to flow. Terms like 'honey' and 'puddle' probably gave rise to the impression in the minds of people of a deposit with fluid characteristics.

Not having had an opportunity to examine this find was unfortunate.  It is often the unplanned development that leaves the most revealing evidence.   By having to dispose of the remainder of his powder and doing so in one of the small swirls - which, incidentally, made it significantly different from all the others - Rob Irving left a valuable clue to the origin of the H-glaze.

As for the above sample donated by Mr Taylor, the most plausible explanation for the layer of material covering the top of the specimen is that it was transferred there by the wheels of the tractor or harvester.   I have no doubt that it would have been possible to find any number of such examples near the tyre tracks.

The last page concludes this report.