Winter season indoor meetings: October 2023 – March 2024
A wide range of talks and presentations were received – all given by the Group’s own members. Topics covered include: Measuring Geological Time, Rock Identification, Glacial Landscapes, The Geologies of Antarctica, Sicily and the Canadian Rockies, Modern approaches to Stratigraphy, Studies of desert sand dune formation from Brigadier Bagnold’s work, and the Nature/origin of sand in the geological context. There was an excellent turnout for the six meetings with an average attendance of around 20.
The outdoor season began in April with a return visit to a group member’s home where we were able to see more of her magnificent collection of rocks, minerals and fossils from around the globe - amassed over a lifetime of enthusiastic prospecting and gathering. A good turnout of around a dozen members attended and we had a communal lunch after the meeting at a nearby pub.
In May, the group visited the Long Meg and her Daughters stone circle (constructed around 3000BC) near Little Salkeld in the Eden Valley (East Cumberland). The Long Meg stone is a tall (circa 4 metre) sandstone monolith of Permian age that is thought to have been quarried nearby. The Daughters stones are 68 glacial erratic granite boulders that were derived from three different and widely spread outcrops of the rock in the Lake District from: Borrowdale, Threkeld and Skiddaw. After examining the stone circle, we visited Lacy’s caves in a sandstone cliff overlooking the River Eden and, close by, a possible quarry site for the Long Meg stone. We also noted the location on our walk of a now closed but once very active anhydrite mine.
In June, the group visited the Permian limestone quarry at Middridge in County Durham. This quarry, now an SSSR site, was opened to access the lower Permian Limestone (Raisby beds) that were a source of material for both the steelmaking and construction industries. Exposed just below the lower limestone strata is a layer of Marl Slate which was formed at the edge of the ancient Zechstein Sea. The Marl Slate strata, which had no commercial value and was discarded by the quarrymen is considered to be the best source of Permian age flora and fauna fossils in the entire UK. Now that the site is an SSSR, fossil hunting is no longer appropriate but the group enjoyed visiting such a nationally important geology site. We had lunch in the excellent Middridge pub and, on the way home, visited the small but wonderfully stocked and volunteer operated Durham Mining Museum at Spennymoor in the old Town Hall. Whist there, we also took time to visit an art gallery in the Town Hall building that supports local artists and has a gallery dedicated to the internationally famous ‘pitman painter’ Norman Cornish – including a facsimile of his studio and an original of his work.
In July we went west to Weardale, again in County Durham, and walked the Stanhope Burn Geotrail. It is close to Stanhope, the main town in Weardale, and there have previously been many quarries and mines operating throughout the length of the dale for centuries. The geology of the whole area is set in the Carboniferous period – but the twin effects of a deep granite pluton, (nearly 300 metres below the valley floor), and the Whin Sill dolerite that has penetrated the sedimentary rocks in various places, have produced considerable mineralisation. The Stanhope Burn area was the site of many mines being constructed to extract valuable metal ores embedded in veins within the Carboniferous rocks – principally lead but other metal ores such as those of iron and zinc have also been extracted. Latterly, the mineral fluorspar has been mined for the steel industry – after having previously been discarded as a useless companion to metallic ore by lead miners. The Stanhope Burn valley was also the site of some limestone quarries that exported their product via a railway system to the Consett steelworks about 15 miles away – as well as being burned in local kilns for agricultural and construction use. With the demise of the steel industry, extraction has now ceased. Now that we are in a post-industrial age, the main industry of the dale has returned to farming with some tourism ventures starting to happen. There are many scars left behind from quarrying and mining operations that reminded us of just how extensive and important mineral extraction once was in the dale. After the walk, we drove down the dale to Wolsingham for a pub lunch before heading home up the A68 main road to Tynedale.
In August we had a field trip to the Hallbankgate area – in North East Cumberland to the south of Brampton. We initially went to examine glacial landforms that are well preserved/undisturbed in that area as it is nearly all agricultural land. In particular we looked at the very well defined Hallbankgate esker that runs for more than a mile through Williamgill Wood. We lunched in the pub at Talkin village and afterwards spent the rest of the afternoon at Forest Head Quarry (now disused) where the Carboniferous Great Limestone strata was quarried for mainly agricultural lime burning in the last century and possibly earlier. A major geological feature in this quarry is a superbly defined ‘box fold’ which thankfully had been left largely intact during quarrying operations.
- In September, the Group had its two day residential visit to the St. Bees area in Western Cumberland. We stayed at the very comfortable Seacote Hotel in the St. Bees village and used our time to explore many of the interesting geological features described on the St. Bees Geotrail - that extends about 8 miles up to Whitehaven. Rather than walk the whole trail in a single outing, we chose to drive and park to take shorter walks to areas of interest on the trail. The St. Bees Headland is a Permo-Triassic sandstone area with high sea cliffs where in places it is possible to descend to beach level and examine the sandstone strata and features. Fleswick Bay is a very atmospheric and empty unspoiled pebbly beach that has magnificent views of the soaring sandstone cliffs. North of the St. Bees headland lies the town of Whitehaven that sits on Coal measures, and once was a major area for coal mining. In the Permo-Triassic rocks close by, anhydrite deposits were discovered and also extensively mined. The combination of local coal and anhydrite deposits fostered the development in the mid 20th century of a major chemical industry producing primary chemical products such as sulphuric acid and tripolyphosphate. At one point, Whitehaven was the single largest production site of sulphuric acid in the world. We saw the huge empty and deserted area where once a large chemical plant had operated. This very site was being considered until recently as the location of a new deep coal mine but that project has now been shelved indefinitely. North of the town on the sea shore we were able to find an extremely rare example of a well consolidated sandstone ‘dyke’ of Permo-Triassic age within faulting cracks in the exposed and level bedded Carboniferous Sandstone strata. We also visited the site of the William Pit where 104 men died in an underground explosion in 1947. Finally, we looked at the Quartenary landform of an undisturbed ‘glacial push moraine’ extending to the south of St. Bees village along the coast for about one mile. This detailed and very informative trip was superbly organised by some our own group members and was greatly enjoyed. We had excellent lunches in local establishments and dined communally in the hotel. Furthermore, we were blessed with wonderful weather for the whole time we were there.