by geologist Eric Robinson

The problem of the continuing availability of our best known building stones is familiar enough, but it was poignantly illustrated recently when I visited Kelmscott Manor, the home of William Morris in the late 19th century.

Threading a way through minor roads outside Lechlade in the Upper Thames Valley, visitors come to a T-junction faced by a well-known local feature - a field boundary marked by up-ended limestone flags.

What was less usual on this occasion was a patch of fresh new stones within the sequence of lichen-encrusted older slabs.

Close examination proved that these were not, in fact, the local flaggy limestone of the nearby Corallian outcrop of the Faringdon Ridge, but Purbeck limestone slabs.

The local stone was widely quarried from shallow workings close to Pusey and Shellingford, workings that are a feature of Arkell\'s Oxford Geology. Those workings are a thing of the past (almost), hence the search for stones to repair this wall reaching as far as Dorset.

Credit has to be given to the Estate for finding a stone that was a good match, but it isn\'t really as good as getting genuine Pusey Flags, even as cannibalised stone from other walls.

Kelmscott Manor sits within farms and cottages that survive as the Upper Thames vernacular, as much an expression of the local geology as the stone outcrops and those now-defunct quarries.

In planning, we could surely make a case for limited \'delving\' of the right stone slabs to sustain this countryscape, even in the face of initial adverse reactions in the largely dormitory villages of the Faringdon-Newbury belt?

It would certainly be a test of the national support for restoration generated recently by television programmes.