Chapter 12 Some more PhDs, and the extension of Lakeland surveying in the 1970s

Abstract

Abstract In the previous two chapters we have been considering some rather broad and grand themes, but the Lake District has also been a site for detailed fieldwork, and often it has been PhD students who have provided the greatest detail. Indeed, the grander themes have commonly rested on the minuter work of the doctoral students. So let us look at some more of these 'micro-studies'. In the present chapter, I shall discuss some of the PhD investigations undertaken in the Lakes in the 1960s and 1970s, chiefly Frank Moseley's students at Birmingham and Jack Soper's at Sheffield, concentrating here on the work done on the Skiddaw Slates and the Borrowdale Volcanics. In the next chapter we shall at last begin to look at the studies of the palaeontology, structure and sedimentology of the strata of the Windermere Group. The first person to be mentioned is Michael Nutt, who worked on the geology of the area around Haweswater in eastern Lakeland while at Queen Mary College, London University, his thesis being completed in 1970 with Moseley as external examiner. Nutt published a few small papers on Lakeland geology in the 1960s (Nutt 1966, 1968), these being written accounts of various field excursions in which he participated, sometimes as leader when they were in 'his' area. Before going to QMC he had been in the merchant navy, and afterwards he obtained a position with the Survey, but he did not do further work for that organization in the Lakes. In 2000 he