SOME FEATURES IN THE D 1 —D 2 LIMESTONES OF THE MILLER’S DALE REGION, DERBYSHIRE

Abstract

I. INTRODUCTION. The village of Miller’s Dale situated in a section of the valley of the River Wye known by the same name, lies some four and a half miles to the east of Buxton. Two miles to the west of Miller’s Dale village in the vicinity of Topley Pike, the lowest known beds in the Carboniferous Limestone of North Derbyshire are exposed in the core of an asymmetric and faulted dome. From Topley Pike to Miller’s Dale and beyond, the regional dip is towards the east, so that at the eastern end of Miller’s Dale beds high in the Lower Carboniferous succession are exposed. For present purposes the Miller’s Dale region is taken to include the upland country to the south of the Wye as indicated in the accompanying map (Fig. 1). The Carboniferous Limestone of this region shows some features of considerable interest, and the many natural exposures augmented by those in the quarries and railway cuttings in Miller’s Dale afford valuable data in the study of the area. The object of this paper is to correlate the more important sections, to explain the behaviour of the upper lava flow at Litton Mill which has been variously interpreted by previous workers, to examine the boundary between the D1 and D2 subzones and finally to present evidence indicating contemporaneous folding in the Carboniferous Limestone of the region. As far as possible, data recorded in the field will be described apart from their interpretation. The plan followed is first to …