I. On the Lower Carboniferous Rocks, exposed in the Excavation for the Foundation of the City of Glasgow Bank, Hanover Street

Abstract

In the month of July 1865, an excavation was made on the west side of Hanover Street, at the corner of Hanover Street and Rose Street, for the foundation of the new office of the City of Glasgow Bank. The excavation was of a square form, and fifteen feet deep. On the north side of the excavation, facing southwards, a very curious series of contortions of the strata, which is of lower Carboniferous age, was displayed. The strata consists of sandstone—yellow, reddish, and grey—sandy shale, and fire clay, and are bent so as to form an anticlinal and synclinal axis, at a distance of only twelve feet, measuring horizontally from the central perpendicular of the anticline to a similar line in the syncline. The strike of the ridge of the anticline is north-west by west. The dip of the strata at the western extremity (left hand of the diagram) is south-west by south, at an angle of 19 degrees. The angle of dip increases as you approach the anticline, being 25, then 28, then 40, after which we have a very sharp anticlinal axis, and the dip reversed, being north-east by north, and the angle 50, which angle is maintained till we come to the synclinal axis, at the east end of the section, where the dip is again raised. The force which has caused this contortion of the strata has evidently been of a local nature. Of this we have two proofs:— 1st, In the bottom of the excavation