The Keuper Marls Around Charnwood

Abstract

Investigation on the Keuper Marls during the past seven years has been the subject of various papers by the author, read before the Leicester Literary & Philosophical Society, the British Association (1907), and finally before the Geological Society (1910). As the complete work is being published in book form, only a brief abstract is given in these pages. The area under consideration—about 300 square miles in extent—is situate on the eastern edge of the central plain of England, and the greater part of it is within from 150 to 350 feet of sea-level. Rising sharply in this plain are the hills of Charnwood, formed of pre-Cambrian rocks, peeping up through the mantle of Keuper Marls, by which they were doubtless once completely covered. The Marls are now found on the flanks of all these hills, and are seen in the quarries at Bardon Hill resting on the old rocks at 810 feet above O.D. and in joint-cracks up to within 32 feet of the summit (912 feet above O.D.), which is the highest point in Charnwood. As has been shown by Prof. W.W. Watts, denudation of the soft Marl cover is gradually revealing the pre-Triassic land-surface almost intact. In this paper are described some of the details of the old rock-surface found beneath Keuper Marl in the quarries. Generally, the quarries have been opened in the tops of the buried or almost buried hills; and as usually the extension of a quarry on each occasion is carried on in the