Chapter 9 The Skiddaw Slates and the Borrowdale Volcanics

Abstract

Abstract In the present chapter, we shall, with a few backward glances, begin to look at the large amount of work done in the Lakes from the 1960s, concentrating on the structure of the Skiddaw Slates, and ideas concerning the stratigraphic relationship of the slates to the overlying Borrowdale Volcanics. Working out the stratigraphy of the SS through consideration of lithologies and fossil zonation was one thing; examining them from the perspective of structural geology was something different again. To my knowledge, the first person to undertake such work chiefly from the perspective of modern structural techniques was Kenneth Glennie, in a Master's thesis entitled 'The structure of the Skiddaw Slates in the north-west Lake District', at Edinburgh University (1955), l the work being undertaken under the supervision of Donald Mclntyre and the American Lionel Weiss. 2 Dennis Jackson and Glennie were at work in the Skiddaws at the same time, but their work did not intersect. Glennie's work, which was focused on the area round Loweswater, Crummock, Buttermere and Ennerdale, was a continuation to the NE of his earlier undergraduate mapping in the area of the hills of Dent and Latterbarrow, SW of Ennerdale, across the Calder Valley and Uldale (see Fig. 20.1). 3 Glennie's empirical investigation was straightforward. He determined the dips and orientations of bedding, cleavage and folds of the slates in his study area, and plotted the data on six-inch maps. His analysis of the data was, however, novel for the Skiddaws, though Oliver and Firman were doing somewhat similar