Pamela Zollicoffer
Paul had always been very interested in things I was researching and would find maps and information for me and did not mind me bothering him. He is a great loss to this world. A real gentleman. The main picture of Paul on his tribute page is one that I took when he accompanied me to authenticate some Blackheath Pebbles stones that can be found in the river. There is a geological layer of them around Blackheath and Charlton, which is called the Blackheath Beds. The picture was taken at Chinbrook Meadows at Grove Park where the River Quaggy flows in a tunnel underneath the Elmstead Woods railway viaduct. I have always thought in this picture that he looks like a geologist you would see in an American film.

How the Blackheath Pebbles were formed
Paul writes…
The black flint of the Blackheath pebbles was originally formed beneath the surface of the chalk, which at that time formed the bottom of the sea, about 87 million years ago. The flint formed in layers, sausage shapes or boulders, with white ‘rinds’. More chalk, perhaps 100 metres thickness, formed over time. Eventually, what became the London area rose out of the sea exposing the chalk to erosion, sometimes by the sea and sometimes by large rivers, that removed most of that 100 metres of chalk. The flint is much harder than the surrounding chalk and so is easily removed from it. It was thoroughly rolled around into well-rounded pebbles without rinds which were then deposited in offshore pebble banks. The Blackheath Pebble Beds were formed about 55 million years ago. The surface markings on the pebbles are evidence of this process. The ‘chatter-marks’ on the surface of the pebbles shows how they repeatedly hit each other, perhaps jostled by the tides. Over the next 15 million years, this area was mainly under the sea and being buried by perhaps about 200 metres of sediment, including the London Clay. During the final 40 million years the area has mainly been land with the sediment slowly being removed.