NEWSLETTER, WINTER 2014

BLOOMSBURY GEOLOGY WALK, SATURDAY 27th APRIL 2013

By Jean Gardner (with help from Clive Maton) The highlight of the walk, led by Clive Maton, was a polished Brazilian metamorphic boulder (2m x 1m x 1m approx.) at the Euston Road entrance to University College Hospital (Fig.1). Ostensibly a sculpture by John Aiken entitled Monolith and Shadow, the boulder is a conglomerate containing well rounded metamorphic and some igneous clasts ranging from pebbles to boulders in a fine crystalline matrix. There are a huge variety of clasts including schists, gneiss, mylonites, jasper, granites and serpentinites. These clasts indicate a continental collision and orogeny followed by erosion and fluvial rounding before deposition in a braided river or bar. It must then have been buried compacted with possible secondary metamorphism creating the crystalline matrix, before its final erosion. This means a history which predates the Andes and possibly starts with the Rodina continent of 1.2 billion years ago.

Fig.1. The group around the Brazilian metamorphic boulder. [Photo: Haydon Bailey]

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We had started at University College on a cold, dry day and looked first at the building’s Jurassic Portland stone which stands on a base of axe dressed Cornish granite. It’s a peloidal limestone made of pellets up to 0.5mm diameter. They are so small that each cubic metre contains eight billion. A freestone, it can be laid in any direction, and carved as evidenced by the Corinthian capitals of the massive columns. We saw Portland stone throughout our walk on buildings such as the Senate House, the British Museum, the War Memorial at Euston and more. We walked through the college to the shelter of the Japanese Garden where a gabbro plaque celebrating the construction of the building below, contrasts with its granitic base. A quick march around the block to Gordon Square brought us to the Institute of Archaeology which is clad in green Borrowdale slates. Ordovician in age their slaty cleavage formed when the tuffs were subjected to low grade metamorphism. They cannot be split as thinly as Welsh slate. They were about an inch thick and showed plumose fractures caused when they were split. Bath Stone from Combe Down quarry was the main building material of the Church of Christ the King, Byng Place (Fig.2). An oolitic limestone from the Middle Jurassic its orange/brown colour reveals the presence of iron. The sloping horizontal courses are of shelly limestone or Ragstone which shows fossils and cross-bedding formed as the current rolled the grains backwards and forwards across the sea bed.

Fig.2. Church of the Church of Christ the King, Byng Place. [Photo: Clive Maton] Byng Place itself is paved with metamorphic setts. They are crystalline, fine to medium grained and well foliated indicating their texture to be a schist. Still looking down this time

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outside Birkbeck College we saw granite paving slabs with large plagioclase feldspar zoned phenocrysts differentiated from the blobs of chewing gum by their oblong shape. The zoning is caused by changes to the composition of the melt during their formation which is shown on many of them being two toned with a darker band around the middle. We saw granite in many shapes and colours. Three obese pillars, i.e. short and bulbous, of pink Peterhead granite support the doorcase of 39, Bedford Square while a micaceous granite plinth bears the Portland stone mass of the Senate House. This stark 1930s’ building was designed by Charles Holden who had strong connections with Harpenden. He designed the London Transport headquarters which are similar in style. Inside the Senate House the foyer floor is coarse textured Italian travertine which Holden favoured for many of his London underground stations. North of Tottenham Court Road station, colonnades clad in Rapakivi granite are most impressive with huge ovoid brown alkali feldspars with plagioclase rims. This granite is 1.6 – 1.7 billion years old and found in the Gulf of Finland. At this point we crossed the road and entered Café Nero where we were able to study the Rapakivi counter while ordering coffee and rock cakes. Suitably refreshed we continued along Tottenham Court Road to the Royal Bank of Scotland where there was more of interest on the outside than on offer inside. It was the best example of Larvikite we saw during the walk, with the iridescent blue feldspars sparkling in the sun. Two panels had been replaced and showed how difficult it is to match them up for colour. Clive set us a puzzle as we ended our walk at Euston. What was wrong with the four natural stone ‘Time Benches’ set on the concourse? It didn’t take Nikki long to spot that they were in the wrong geological order. The last was yet another example of Portland Stone but this one was incredibly fossiliferous with many examples of the gastropod Aptyxiella, commonly known as the Portland Screw. Much more weathering and it will soon be too uncomfortable to sit on. It began to rain as we were thanking Clive for such an enjoyable tour. He dashed off to a pub he had researched with a small entourage, (allegedly to study its building stone), while the rest of us headed for the imposing portals of St. Pancras station.

GA FIELD TRIP: TOTTERNHOE AND KENSWORTH QUARRIES: LED BY HAYDON BAILEY, SATURDAY 18th MAY 2013

By Lesley Exton (with help from Haydon Bailey)

Several HGS members went on this GA field trip led by Haydon. On an overcast but dry morning, we assembled at Totternhoe Knolls car park, taking it over from the local dog walkers. Before we climbed up the slope at the back of the car park and walked through the nature reserve to the quarry Haydon gave the group a brief introduction to the Upper Cretaceous chalk succession and the history of quarrying these deposits in this area.

The Totternhoe stone is located in the middle of the Grey Chalk (Lower Chalk) succession, at the Zig Zag/Westbury Formation boundary and the beds are usually about 1m thick along the Chilterns, however, here they are 5-7m thick and we were asked to think why. It is a freestone, with no bedding planes or joints and can be broken up into large blocks. Although it doesn’t weather very well, many of the local Norman churches are built of it as it is the

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only building stone available in this area. Like many chalks it is relatively soft when first quarried and is therefore easily worked by masons. Over time it loses any original moisture and hardens.

The stone has been worked here since Roman times and was actively mined until the 1880’s. Rugby Portland Cement worked the quarry until the 1960’s when it was finally closed down. The stone quarry was then re-opened in the 1970’s when the Duke of Bedford was looking for stone to renovate Woburn Abbey and there has been enough work to keep it going ever since. It is a very small scale operation, just one man and his digger.

Fig.3. Exploring Totternhoe quarry. [Photo: Lesley Exton]

The stone itself is a massive grey-brown calcarenitic limestone, formed of bioclastic shell debris in a limey matrix, with phosphatic clasts or pebbles in the lower part. At Totternhoe it was deposited in a channel which cuts into the underlying Westbury Marly Chalk to at least the level of the Doolittle Limestone. The Totternhoe Stone occurs at the same level as the Channel Tunnel was cut so the same microfossil fauna is found through both. The party walked down into the working part of the quarry and after stopping to examine a 35cm section of an ammonite (Lewesiceras) kindly left near the path by a previous visitor, went searching for their own finds (Fig.3). No one found anything that big, but most individuals came away with something. My own find turned out to be a part of a shark’s vertebra.

After lunch at Dunstable Downs Visitors Centre we continued on to Kensworth Quarry the UK’s largest, and probably best hidden working chalk quarry. It produces c. 8,000 tons of chalk per day which is transferred via pipeline to the Cemex Rugby cement works. After a long walk in, we stopped to take in an overview of the whole quarry noting the clay pipes in the face opposite (some 300m away), some of which went down 30-40m through the chalk. We started at the top of the succession, which is at the bottom of the White Chalk Subgroup (Upper Chalk). Sedimentation here had been very slow and the resulting chalk was

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extensively burrowed and unlike anything most of us had seen before (Fig.4). It was also extremely hard as Tom Foggerty found out trying to extract the best find of the day, a sharks tooth (Fig.5).

Fig.4. Unusual chalk at the top of the succession at Kensworth Quarry. [Photo: Lesley Exton]

Fig.5. Sharks tooth, Kensworth Quarry. [Photo: Lesley Exton]

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Following Rory Mortimore’s chalk succession column of the quarry published in the GCR volume in 2001 and reproduced in our field guide we walked down into the lower White Chalk (Middle Chalk) identifying each of the flint and marl beds as we went. A one of these Haydon gave the group a brief summary of how flints are formed. The flint beds get less common as you descend; this is due to the increase of clay at the time of deposition, which absorbs the silica so it is no longer free to crystallize out. We eventually walked down into unknown territory; the current quarry floor is about 10-12m below the current logged succession. We ended the day examining the clay pipes close up, some of which were filled with flints, before beginning the long walk back out of the quarry.

DUDLEY CANAL TUNNEL & LIMESTONE MINES AND WRENS NEST SUNDAY

28th JULY 2013.

By Lesley Exton

A half marathon due to take place in St Albans that morning necessitated the change of the meeting point to Gadebridge Park, Hemel Hempstead. There we left our cars in the car park and travelled north by coach up to Dudley Canal Trust, where we were met by our guide for the day, Graham Worton, geologist at the Dudley Museum. The first part of the day consisted of a 45 minute trip on a narrow boat through over 420 million years of history covering geology, archaeology, engineering, sociology and economics (Fig.6). Graham was well known to the boat driver and was allowed to add to the commentary during the trip. This included a video show projected onto one of the cavern walls in the tunnel that explained how the Wenlock limestone was formed in the middle Silurian, 428 million years ago and identified the fossils within it that can be seen today.

Fig.6. The group on the narrow boat ready to go into the tunnel. [Photo: Lesley Exton]

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The original 220 yard tunnel build by Lord Dudley was started in 1775 and dug out by hand. It was one of the most adventurous projects undertaken on a British canal and was completed in just 3 years. It enabled narrow boats to be loaded with limestone in his mines and taken directly to the canal side iron works throughout the Black Country. The limestone was needed as a flux to remove the impurities from the iron. Coal was also mined in some of the audits off the tunnels and moved the same way. All along the sides of the tunnel there are square holes which allow rainwater to drain into the canal. It would take several days for the rain we’d had the previous day to percolate through. In 1785 the tunnel was extended by almost 2 miles to connect with the Stourbridge Canal and by the 1850’s over 40,000 boats a year (one every 6 minutes) were passing through. The second tunnel we entered was new, built in 1989 as it was cheaper to build a new tunnel than maintain the old one. It follows the fault line in the rock so isn’t straight. Extracting the limestone created huge caverns, some of which extend 80ft below where we were and are now flooded. By the 1880’s most of the mines were worked out so the Earl of Dudley started holding concerts down in the caverns, with most of the guests coming via the canals. One in particular is called the Singing Cavern, it would be illuminated by gas lights and flares would be set off at the end of the performance. The Silurian was defined by Sir Roderick Murchison in 1839, 65% of the evidence came from Dudley. He befriended the miners and they eventually showed him where they were finding the fossils. In 1849 he brought the British Association to the caverns for an address, 15,000 miners and their families were waiting in the darkness, afterwards they carried him out and crowned him ‘King of the Silurian’. There are two limestone beds, the thin bed (Upper Quarried Limestone Member) averaging 8m thick and the thick bed (Lower Quarried Limestone Member) at 12.5m, separated by the Nodular member. Mining was a hard occupation, the average life expectancy was 34 and each miner would extract 300-400 tonnes a week. Fossils were very special as these could be sold to supplement their income. The size of the trade may be judged by the existence of three fossil shops in Dudley the 1850’s. Originally a barge stick would be used to push the barge along the tunnel; however, this damaged the tunnels so the Earl of Dudley banned them. The barges were then moved by ‘legging’. One professional legger was Jack Wheeler; he charged 28d per barge and legged it through the tunnel four times a day. However, he waited until there were 10 barges, linked them together and legged them through together, earning £2 3s 4d per trip. The barges would go one way one day and then the opposite way the next day. In 1838 a new tunnel, three times wider was built, so the boats could pass both ways, with a towpath, so horses could pull them along. The Dudley Canal Trust www.dudleycanaltrust.org.uk was formed in 1964, after an attempt to seal off the portals of the tunnels which were choked with weeds and rubbish. The Trust ran weekend trips through the tunnels, which generated interest and support for the group that enabled them to completely restore a section of the canal which was reopened Easter 1973. In 1983 they obtained a grant to finance the construction of the first new canal tunnel for 129 years to re-connect with the Singing Cavern. This was opened in 1984 by a Blue Peter host; however, the commemorative plaque was placed too low on the tunnel wall and ended up underwater when the water was allowed back in, so they had to apply to the BBC for a replacement! A second new tunnel was constructed in 1989, which allows for a round trip and they have plans to reopen the 1km tunnel to Wren’s Nest and the Cathedral Gallery with an industrial shaft to the surface in the future.

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After a very leisurely roast lunch at the Park Inn, we moved onto Wren’s Nest in the middle the Priory Estate, home to 5,000 families. It was the first National Nature Reserve for geology set up in 1956. While the last of the doodle bombs were falling on London, fifty natural scientists got together in Whitehall to draw together plans for reconciliation and healing after the end of the war. This led to the 1949 Act which set up the National Parks, SSI’s & National Nature Reserves. After the brief history lesson we moved into Snake Pit to examine the rocks (Fig.7). Graham exhorted us to take the big view and have an eye to the detail. This was an unnatural landscape, as excavation in to the side of the hill to extract the hard limestone had occurred. After explaining the different layers we could see and the conditions in which they were formed, alternating shallow and deep water, we then had to work out which was the oldest. This we did by finding a surface that had ripple marks on which was the Nodular member. The next unit we could see was the Upper Quarried Limestone Member, a sequence of alternating flaggy limestones and thin shales overlain by a massive limestone 4.2m thick (this was section the quarrymen were looking for) and capped by a 1.2m of nodular limestone. The youngest unit was the grey shales of the Lower Elton Formation.

Fig. 7. Graham Worton explaining the geology of the Snake Pit. [Photo: Lesley Exton] At the entrance is a large wooden carving of the trilobite known as the Dudley bug. It was created by a local 22 years ago during the Great Dudley bug hunt and has survived due to a sense of ownership by the locals, whereas the fence behind has been replaced three times in the ensuing years! We were joined at this point by two local youngsters who added their own knowledge to our guide’s, until they got bored. In the 17th century one of the King’s hunting lodges had stood on the site and it was here in 1678 Abraham Darby, the father of the Industrial Revolution was born. We then followed the layers up through a siding on the opposite side of the road known as the NCC cut, until we reached a layer which consisted of

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rotted volcanic ash. Graham explained how this layer and the zircon crystals within it were used to date the rocks to 427.77 million years. Once that had been established, the chemistry was looked at to try and work out where the volcanic activity had been. It was identified as a granodorite, probably from explosive volcanoes on an island arc, however, nothing seemed to fit, and then 800m down volcanic rocks with the same signature were found 50 miles away at Cheltenham in the Mendips. This fits with modern knowledge that 2mm zircon crystals will travel only 50-80 miles on the wind. The deep water and shallow water cycles of limestones separated by silty shales and mudstones continued as we moved up the 35m slope and nearer the core. As we reached the core it went into mudstone and shale, which indicated a prolonged period of deep water. The bentonite clay here was dated to 429.1 million years, so the whole sequence was laid down in 1.2 million years. We continued our walk round, leaving the ‘forest’, the unstable land that can’t be built on due to the tunnelling below, and out into fields at the top where there is no limestone below. This is now football fields, but was originally a farm, before being sold off for firing ranges to train WWI soldiers. We continued onto Murchison’s View, which looks out over Dudley Castle, Birmingham & the Clent Hills, where Graham gave us a synopsis of the importance of Sir Roderick Murchison’s work in the area. The rocks had tilted to the east as we came up the slope; we had now crossed over the top of the anticline so at the Seven Sisters the rocks were dipping west. This is thought to be a series of patch reefs as the ‘pillars’ of each of the ‘sisters’ can be seen to be different deposits. They were created by miners using the ‘pillar and stall’ method, whereby as much as possible of the Lower Quarried Limestone Member was removed and the pillars left to hold up the roof and are currently sealed off due to a recent collapse. After a brief run through the development of iron smelting and industrial revolution while we waited for a brief rainstorm to abate we finished our tour by viewing the cliff face known as the ripple beds, the bedding place of the upper part of the Nodular member, while under fire from stone throwing locals.

Fig.8. The Dudley bug. [Photo: Clive Maton]

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We retreated from the platform once they got their aim in and after saying goodbye to Graham and his niece at the quarry we had a short time there looking for fossils. There are 650 species of fossil to be found. The Dudley bugs were hiding and only Clive managed to find part of one and photograph another in situ (Fig.8). Other members of the group found corals, crinoids and brachiopods. All too soon we had to head back to the coach to return home after a very enjoyable day.

THE MESOZOIC ROCKS OF SOUTH EAST DEVON 17th – 20th OCTOBER 2013

By Lesley Exton

Friday, October 17th With the prospect of heavy rain first thing, our leader Malcolm Hart changed the itinerary and gave us a leisurely start and the chance to see the specimen of the rhyncosaur Fodonyx spenceri he and his students had found in the Otter Sandstone Formation. So he met us at our hotel in Exeter after breakfast and we walked down the road to the Royal Albert Museum for a quick visit to the geological room there. Then it was back to the hotel to collect our field kit and guides and off in Bobby’s new coach to Orcombe Point, the western end of the World Heritage Site. The Dorset and East Devon Coast from Orcombe Point to Studland was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001, but this doesn’t give it any protection. It sits on the western edge of the Portland-Wight Basin (Wessex Basin) and includes 85 miles of coastline which covers 185 My of Earth’s history.

Fig.9. The group around the ‘Geoneedle’ at Orcome Point [Photo: Nikki Edwards]

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Malcolm explained that there had been discussions at the time of the submission about extending westwards to Torquay and eastwards to include the Isle of Wight but for various reasons it was decided not to. Most of the sites are SSSI’s and the gaps have been filled with RIGS sites, which are now managed by the Science & Advisory Group in conjunction with Natural England. We then climbed up the cliff top path at Orcombe Point to the ‘Geoneedle’ with its geological succession of the rock types which marks the official western end of the World Heritage Site and also enjoyed the view over the Ex estuary. Even though it was early on the trip it was decided this was a suitable point for a group photo (Fig.9), after which we made out way back down to the beach to get a closer look at the formation. The Triassic Exmouth Mudstone and Sandstone Formation (Lower Aylesbeare Mudstone Group) is 250m thick and is formed of red mudstones and sandstones, with layers that are occasionally green in colour. The quartz grains are sub-angular to sub-rounded, indicating that they have been moved by water rather than the wind. The sediments were probably deposited in meandering flowing rivers. Occasional floods caused the deposition of over-bank muds and many of these show desiccation cracks. In was then back to the coach and up the succession to our next stop and lunch on the Budleigh Salterton seafront. After lunch we all met up on the cliff path and descended onto the beach. The Budleigh Salterton Pebble Beds (BSPB) (Lower Sherwood Sandstone Group) overlie the Littleham Mudstone Formation (Upper Aylesbeare Mudstone Group). About 90% of the cobbles, boulders and pebbles in this formation are of purple quartzite which is Ordovician in age and believed to have originated from the south (Armorica). The deposit was formed as a braided river system flowing north from the southern part of the Wessex Basin and several examples of channels, pebble imbrications and levee systems can be seen in the cliffs. The deposit stops suddenly and Malcolm thinks the movement of a fault system along the line of the present day English Channel could have cut off the supply of pebbles. We then examined the top of the BSPB, the pebbles here are really polished and have a purple iridescence surface which is finely pitted (dreikanters). Overlaying this is the base of the Otter Sandstone Formation, the lower part of which is honeycombed and uncemented and was lain down in desert conditions. At the boundary with the BSPB there is a yellow layer known as the Ventifact bed which is iron depleted (Fig.10). The higher levels of the Otter Sandstone Formation are water-lain sands and mudstones from the same direction as the BSPB, but there are no sign of pebbles in this formation. Our final stop of the day was Ladram Bay where, after a brief detour to look at the mid-Cretaceous sarsons used on the crazy golf course, we went down to the beach to get a closer view of the channels and levees in the Otter Sandstone Formation, all the while trying to avoid the swarms of flies there. We then walked across the beach and Malcolm pointed out the spot where the rhyncosaur fossil we’d seen in the museum earlier had been found (currently under water). We finally returned up the path and walked a little way along the coast path to have a look at the stacks in the next bay before retreating to the holiday camp café for a well earned drink and a couple of the group were lucky enough to secure the last of the clotted cream teas. That evening we ate at the hotel, however, considering we were the only ones in the dining room the service was extremely slow.

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Fig.10. Group examining the Ventifact bed, Budleigh Salterton. [Photo: Lesley Exton] Saturday, October 18th The next morning we drove to Lyme Regis where within a couple of minutes of disembarking from the coach we were struggling to get into our waterproofs as the heavy rain finally arrived, 24 hours late. Luckily it didn’t last long and we were soon heading west along the beach. The plan was to walk to the Triassic-Jurassic boundary without looking at the fossils (that was for the walk back). However, that was more easily said than done, and most of the party came to a stop at the Ammonite Pavement. This is covered in Coroniceras (Metophioceras) conybeari and is an important stratigraphical marker as well as being incredibly impressive. Our first official stop was at Pinhay Bay to look at the boundary between the White Lias and the Blue Lias (Fig.11). The White Lias (Langport Member) is well exposed and many sedimentary structures can be seen, including pebble beds, soft-sediment deformation and slumping and the fragmentary remains of Liostrea hisingeri. The topmost bed of the Langport Member (the Sun Bed) displays an array of ‘U-shaped’ burrows. Above this bed the distinctive mudstone/limestone cycles of the Blue Lias could be seen. The first appearance of the basal Jurassic ammonite Psiloceras occurs about 2m above this lithological boundary. It was here we stopped for lunch in the sunshine and Malcolm explained that the Triassic/Jurassic boundary type section recently chosen was half way up an Austrian mountain. He then talked about Milankovic cycles, Mary Anning and Sir Henry De La Beche and their relationship with Pinhay Bay and Lyme. We then made our way back along the beach at our own pace. Unfortunately, several of the party fell, with one dislocating his finger, so we cut the day short and returned to Exeter to drop him off at A&E. As compensation Haydon offered to do a building stone wall around

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the Cathedral and those interested met him in the foyer of the hotel just before six. We then ate at the Brassiere in the Cathedral Yard.

Fig.11. Pinhay Bay, boundary between the White Lias & the Blue Bias. [Photo: Lesley Exton] Sunday, October 19th We started the day catching up on what we’d missed out yesterday, at an alternative location, by driving to Seaton Hole. Here we examined the Keuper Marl, now known as the Mercia Mudstone and looked for veins of anhydrite which looked like fibrous paper, with a few areas of more solid gypsum. However, we had to first climb over the blocks of rock deposited on the beach to stop further erosion. There used to be large beach at this site, but in the 1970’s Beer council put in sea defences and since then the beach has disappeared and the sea is now attacking the cliffs. Meanwhile, the beach at Beer has increased considerably to the stage that it is now overflowing the sea defences! We then turned round and looked at the north/south Seaton Hole Fault which brings the Triassic directly into contact with the mid Cretaceous section. There has been a 260m uplift so that the Mercia Mudstone is right at the bottom, overlain by chert (White Chert Member) and then the limestone that we will pick up again at Beer. There is a slight north/south syncline between here and Beer which along with the fault has preserved the thickness of chalk in this area. Returning up the path and back onto the coach we moved onto Beer where after looking down on the extended beach now used to store a number of small boats, we were introduced to the subject of Haydon’s first paper, Annis’ Knob. This is a very condensed section of the Middle/Upper chalk, with a major flint layer, probably not in place and a bit of an oddity.

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Fig.12. Beer beach with Annis’ Knob up on the cliff from the east end. [Photo: Lesley Exton] Malcolm then said that a new coastal footpath that has been put in behind this formation has confirmed it is not in situ but has slumped down (Fig.12). We then descended on to the beach and made our way to the west end of the beach where the sea defences had been put in. The lowermost Middle Chalk in this area contains a number of limonitic and phosphatic hardgrounds. The most distinctive features are two flint free zones, Rowe’s 2ft band and above it Rowe’s 4ft band, somewhere between these two was one of the warmest intervals of the Mesozoic with a sea level 150-200m above what it is now. Global temperatures were much higher with CO2 8 to 12 times the present day. The pH of the water would have been much lower (so there would have been very little ice) so the ocean was calcitic, rather than aragonitic and the sea floor would not have been pleasant. We then retraced our steps and made our way to the other end of the beach ably helped by recycled conveyor belts that had been laid down over the cobbles to make walking on the beach much easier. The sequence here comprises the Beer Head Limestone Formation which consists of 4 beds (A1, A2, B and C) separated by complex phosphatised horizons. In places the limestones are conglomeratic, with included pebbles impregnated with both glauconite and phosphate. The limestone represents considerable reworking and was full of macrofossils including an uncoiled ammonite (Scaphites); however, they were impossible to get out (Fig.3). We called it a morning at this point as it had started raining and retreated to an extended beach hut where there were a series of displays on the natural history, local history, geology, flora & fauna of the area. After agreeing a time and place to met up the group dispersed to various local cafes and pubs for lunch.

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Fig.13. Uncoiled ammonite (Scaphites). [Photo: Lesley Exton]

Fig.14. View of the Hooken Cliffe landslide from Beer Head. [Photo: Lesley Exton]

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The rain had stopped by the time we re-assembled and Clive ran through the options for the afternoon. In the end we decided to stick with the original plan and walk up to the viewing point at Beer Head. From here we enjoyed the panorama and looked down onto the 1769 Hooken Cliff landslide (Fig.14), before turning round and following a group of muddy young ramblers, who had obviously come up through the landslide, back down. Once back in Beer, there was just time for a quick ice cream and the purchase of some edible souvenirs before making our way back to the coach for the journey back. Everyone had thoroughly enjoyed the weekend thanks to Malcolm for his clear explanation of the geology and the field guide, to Clive for his organisation and to Bobby for his careful driving and interest in our activities.

CHAIRMAN’S CONCLUDING REMARKS

By Haydon Bailey

Looking back over the last twelve months is a dangerous thing to do at times, but I see that we’ve had a good year of lectures and some pretty interesting field trips. Dealing with the field trips first I’d like to thank Clive Maton for taking over as Field Meetings Secretary and immediately taking the bull by the horns when we had to curtail our planned trip to Oxford when they decided to put a new roof on the Natural History Museum. Nevertheless we subsequently had a very successful alternative trip to the Wren’s Nest, Dudley, ably led by Graham Worton. In the midst of potential October rainstorms an intrepid group of twelve members went off to Devon to examine the Triassic red bed succession between Exmouth and Pin Hay Bay, followed by the Lower Jurassic west of Lyme Regis and on the Sunday, the Chalk/Mercia Mudstone faulted contact at Seaton Hole and the Cenomanian to Coniacian Chalk of Beer. Clive had once again ably organised the logistics, whilst the geological leadership was provided by Professor Malcolm Hart of the University of Plymouth. A pdf version of the field guide is being made available via the website. The committee is being hyper-organised currently by putting in place a further continuation of our exploration of the Jurassic Coast next year, this time led by Dr. Matt Wakefield of the BG Group. The intention appears to be to role this on into an Isle of Wight trip in 2015 which is showing a high level of organisation. The lectures we’ve had through the year have covered all aspects of geology and a wide geographical spread at the same time. From Italian earthquakes, Chinese volcanoes, South American sea level changes to Greenland intrusive it’s been as wide ranging as could be. Next year’s programme is already lining up to be thoroughly enjoyable so I’m looking forward to 2014. Finally, in May next year I will take over from Rory Mortimore as President of the Geologists’ Association – a position which I’ll hold for two years. I really don’t want this to affect my involvement and attendance at our lecture and field meetings as I value the contact and friendship I have with you all, but it will take up a lot of my spare time and there will be occasions when I can’t be in two places at once. We have a really able committee in place quite capable of running the society in my absence, although I hope this will be rare. Let’s use the opportunity provided by my work for the GA to reinforce the links between the Association and HGS so that everyone benefits.