Colwyn Bay Research Articles

The Glacio-Marine Drift of the Vale of Clwyd

(1) Boulder Clay from Craig, west of Llaudulas, to the Vale of Clwyd, south-east of Abergele. Immediately east of Craig, between Llandulas and Colwyn Bay (No. 1 in the Map) the Boulder Clay stands out in vertical cliffs about 30 feet high, and so compact that it is undercut by the waves, in a manner similar to that often seen in rock-cliffs. A closer examination shows that it is very full of angular fragments of limestone, derived from the Carboniferous Limestone-rock against which it lies. Several large blocks of Welsh felstone and blocks of slate-rock—showing banding or original bedding—occur on the shore, and I found a small boulder of Eskdale granite in the clay. At one place the clay appears to be foliated in a vertical direction. It does not appear that there are many shell-fragments in the clay, as I found only one example. All the Boulder Clay described in this paper is of a brown or reddish-brown colour, containing northern erratics, and is similar to the low-level Boulder Clays of Lancashire and Cheshire, excepting where it is mixed with the waste of the hills against which it may happen to lie. A microscopic examination of a specimen of the clay by Mr. Joseph Wright, F.G.S., for foraminifera yielded negative results. The following is a mechanical analysis showing the coust, itution of the clay ; specimen taken about 5 feet above the shore :— This leaves 50 per cent. of clay, if we count as clay all the material

The Drift-deposits of Colwyn Bay

In a former paper I gave a short sketch of the drift disclosed in the ballast-pit at Colwyn-Bay station; and as in February of 1884 I had an opportunity of extending my observations over a larger area, I now propose to give an account of them. From Colwyn Head to Rhos Point is a distance of about three miles; and all along the shore, except where obscured by the Colwyn Bay parade or grassed over by the railway company, are to be seen in cliffs excellent sections of the drift. This drift, extending backward to the foot of the hills which sweep in a curve from headland to headland, rests nearly wholly on the Silurian rocks, representatives of the Wenlock Shale. Colwyn Head or Penmaen Cliffs, and Rhos Point, are denuded remnants of the Carboniferous Limestone, and near to each of these headlands the drift is seen to rest directly on the limestone, there being no exposure of the underlying Silurians anywhere to be seen in Colwyn Bay. The surface of the drift is remarkably level, excepting where it gradually creeps up the hills. Most of the houses in Colwyn Bay are built upon it. It is crescent-shaped on plan, thinning out towards the outward curve, which rests on the hills, and thickening towards the Bay. The drift may be roughly grouped into three divisions in ascending order, as follows :— 1. Bluish-grey Till (bed l, figs. 1 & 2), hard and tough, evidently composed of the combined grindings or

Robert Angus Smith

A NOTHER of the men of the middle time has passed away. Early on Monday morning, the 12th inst., whilst Adolphe Wurtz lay dying at Paris, Angus Smith breathed his last at Glynwood, Colwyn Bay. Both men were of the same age, and both were pupils of the illustrious Liebig—students in the great chemical school of Giessen. Each, in a sense, was imbued with some one phase of the spirit of their many-sided master, but in a different manner: Wurtz spent his energies and won his greatest triumphs in the development of chemical theory, and in the elucidation of the structure of organic compounds; Smith had probably little knowledge of, and but little sympathy with, the theories of modern organic chemistry; and although possessed of his countrymen's love of metaphysics, and, as his writings show, capable of much abstract speculation, his conceptions of chemical constitution were probably, in the main, as mechanical as those of Dalton, whose disciple and chief interpreter he considered himself to be. His chief point of contact with Liebig lay in his recognition of the utilitarian side of his science: for upwards of forty years he laboured unceasingly to show how chemistry might minister to the material comfort and physical well-being of men—not in the manufacture of new compounds useful in the arts, or in the establishment of new industries,—but in raising the general standard of the health of communities by checking or counteracting the evils which have followed in the train of that enormous development of the manufacturing arts which is the boast of this century. Sweetness and light were fixed articles in Smith's creed. His love of fresh air, of pure water, of a green hillside was intense. “Where to, sir?” asked a cabdriver whom Smith had hailed on his way home, tired and longing for escape from beneath the dull, murky Manchester sky. “To the sun!” was the answer. And we are told that it was to the credit of that cabman that he did not take the old philosopher to some hostelry with the sign of Phœbus, but trundled him among the green lanes beyond the city's outskirts until it was time to turn the horse's head homewards. To keep the air in our towns fresh and wholesome, to restore the water of our streams to its pristine clearness, to preserve the freshness and verdure of the fields and woods, to sweeten the atmosphere of the crowded dwellings in cities,—this was the kind of work to which Smith dedicated his life, and at which he laboured to the very last. There have been greater chemists, no doubt; his name is not associated with any fundamental discovery in chemistry, and his attempts at theorising were not always very happy; but in his true vocation, as the chemist of sanitary science, Smith worked alone, and we have yet to find the man on whom his mantle has fallen.

V.—Notes on Geological Sections, within Forty Miles Radius of Southport

Striking a radius of 40 miles from Southport, the line will be seen to intersect the sea-coast near the Silurian districts of Ulverstone in North Lancashire, and Colwyn Bay in North Wales. The succession in both cases is very similar, Denbighshire Grits and Flags of the one area corresponding in time to the Coniston Grits and Flags of the other; and just as the Silurians of the Lake District are overlaid by a fringe of Carboniferous Limestone, so the Silurians of Diganwy are overlaid by the Carboniferous Limestone of the Great and Little Ormes Head. Laid upon a floor of Silurian rocks, the Carboniferous Limestone may be regarded as extending continuously under the Irish Sea, and underlying the various Carboniferous and Triassic rocks now occupying Lancashire.

IV.—The age of Floating Ice in North Wales

Without occupying valuable space with introductory remarks, I would begin with a description and attempted explanation of the drifts along the coast of Rhos Bay, or what is now generally called Colwyn Bay. Well-sinkings, clay and gravel pits, and coast sections, very clearly reveal a quadripartite arrangement of drifts similar to what may be seen in Cumberland. A recent well-boring at Old Colwyn went through loose gravel 9 feet; brown clay, 33 feet; and was stopped in blue clay. In Mr. Pender's brickfield, west of the Station, the pit-section and a well-boring have revealed red brick clay nearly 20 feet; sand and a little fine gravel, 16 feet; boring drill stuck fast under 60 feet of blue clay. In the ballast-pit close to the Railway Station, 30 or 40 feet of sand and gravel lie under a thin covering of red clay, the former (according to Mr. Darbishire, though this I overlooked) being underlaid by brown clay; and the sand rises up from beneath the red clay at a spot south of the road between New Colwyn and Mr. Pender's brickfield.