The Woolhope and Usk Basins: Silurian rift basins revealed by subsurface mapping of the southern Welsh Borderland

Abstract

Subsurface mapping of the southern Welsh Borderland has utilized over 600 km of seismic data and three exploration boreholes to investigate the subsurface of this classic geological area. The survey reveals two Silurian basins, each about 400 km 2 in area, in the western part of the Midland Platform. The Woolhope Basin underlies the Silurian inlier of the Woolhope Anticline. The basin fill is bounded to the northwest by faults of the Neath Disturbance, and was also influenced by WNW-striking extensional growth faults. The fill thins eastward towards the Malvern Line. Lower Silurian sequences thin southward before thickening again, particularly across WNW-striking faults. The resulting Usk Basin, underlying the Usk Inlier, has ill-defined margins, but some additional N-S fault control. The Fownhope-1 and Usk-1 wells indicate that rapid subsidence occurred in both basins during Rhuddanian and Aeronian (Early to Mid-Llandovery) time. Modelling of this subsidence, assuming the finite duration lithospheric extension model, yields stretching factors of between 1.3 and 1.6. The later part of the fill to both basins is marine, but red conglomerates, sandstones and mudstones in their Early Llandovery intervals suggest continental fluvial environments in the initial stages of basin development. The Woolhope and Usk Basins show that the western sector of the Midland Platform rifted during Early to Mid-Llandovery time, perhaps during regional dextral transtension. The rifting is synchronous with, and perhaps genetically related to, an episode of mafic volcanism in the southwest part of the platform. However, this rifting apparently predates the Late Llandovery (Telychian) fault-controlled subsidence seen in the Welsh Basin to the northwest.