Cheltenham sits at roughly 60 metres above sea level on the lower Cotswold dip slope, where the town centre overlies Charmouth Mudstone and the northern suburbs transition into Inferior Oolite limestone. In our experience, a borehole log alone misses the thin sand lenses and weathered clay bands that control foundation settlement here. Cone Penetration Testing captures those transitions continuously — tip resistance, sleeve friction, and pore pressure every 20 mm — giving you a stratigraphic profile that reads almost like a core but without the sample disturbance. For projects near the River Chelt or in the expanding residential zones around Hester’s Way, this continuous record is what separates a safe foundation depth from a costly underpinning job later.
In Cheltenham's Lias Clay, a CPT trace tells you more about undrained shear strength in two hours than a week of triaxial tests ever could.
