A Striated Surface at Sandsend

Abstract

Though glacial beds cover the solid rocks of the Yorkshire coast from Redcar to Bridlington, glaciated surfaces are rare. This arises from the texture and comparatively soft nature of the Jurassic and Cretaceous strata, of which East Yorkshire is built. Hard bands do, however, occur here and there in the Oolitic beds, and in two localities, Filey and Robin Hood’s Bay, striated surfaces have been observed upon them. The object of the following note is to record an additional locality. Sandsend is a small fishing village, picturesquely situated on the Yorkshire coast, two and a half miles north of Whitby, at the point where the Sandsend beck enters the sea. South of the beck, the high cliffs overlooking the sea are for the most part composed of boulder clay and gravel, and there is evidence that in the neighbourhood of Upgang the drifts fill in a pre-glacial valley, believed by Mr. G. Barrow to be the pre-glacial channel of the Esk. North of the beck the high ground consists of Jurassic rocks covered by drift. These beds are well exposed on the coast, and can also be seen in the series of old quarries connected with the abandoned Sandsend alum works. Throughout these old workings the “ Dogger” Oolite (a very variable bed) overlies the alum shale, and is represented by a conspicuous band of evenly-bedded, hard, ferruginous sandstone, thirty feet thick, flaggy towards the bottom, but massive and exceedingly hard at the top. The boulder clay which overlies the ...