East Devon Research Articles

The stratigraphy of the Chalk Group (Cretaceous) of the Devon coast, UK

An almost continuous layer of Upper Cretaceous deposits up to 1000 m thick was probably deposited across much of SW England. Phases of uplift in the late Cretaceous and early Cenozoic, each of which was followed by extensive erosion and dissolution, resulted in the removal of all except a few outliers of Chalk Group that crop out in east Devon and south Somerset. Those on the Devon coast between Sidmouth and Lyme Regis are some of the best exposed Cenomanian to early Coniacian successions in NW Europe and include the most westerly chalks preserved onshore in England. They form an integral part of the Dorset and East Devon World Heritage Site. In contrast to the Chalk of much of southern England, the older formations in Devon, the Beer Head Limestone, Holywell Nodular Chalk and New Pit Chalk, show marked lateral lithological variations that result from a combination of penecontemporaneous movements on local faults and relatively shallow-water environments close to the western edge of the Chalk depositional basin. The younger parts of the succession, the Lewes Nodular Chalk and Seaford Chalk Formations, comprise chalks that do not appear to have been greatly affected by penecontemporaneous fault movements. These formations include lithological marker beds that have been correlated with marker beds in the Sussex type area. The principal sedimentary breaks in the Devon succession cannot be correlated with confidence with eustatic changes in sea level.

Triassic tragedy—a bone bed in the Otter Sandstone of East Devon, south‐west England

A thin layer of Middle Triassic Otter Sandstone recently exposed on south‐west England's East Devon coast produced abundant and diverse vertebrate fossils, including previously unrecorded taxa. Some of the remains are remarkably complete, allowing CT scanning of Otter Sandstone fossils for the first time. Here we discuss the formation of this assemblage and summarize the preserved fauna, which provides an important insight into the recovery of terrestrial ecosystems following the Earth's greatest mass extinction.

Creative Dislocation: an Experiment in Collaborative Historical Research

Abstract This article introduces an experiment in collaborative historical practice. It describes how six historians visited the East Devon village of Branscombe, with the aim of creatively engaging with the present and past of the village. This was a collaborative and collective act of what we term here ‘creative dislocation’. By dislocating from our usual routines, subjects, places, methods, and styles, and adopting creative methods and constraints, we aimed to shed light on the role of creativity in the historical research process. Our experiment resulted in six pieces of writing – three of which are presented here. However, a key argument of this article is that creativity lies in process as much as in the finished product. Creative work happened at each stage of the research process, in ways that were not always immediately visible in the final written pieces. The creativity in historical research and writing does not necessarily lie in opposition to archival explorations and fact-driven narratives, but can also lie within them. Creativity informs the questions we ask, our ways of working with the archive and our approach to writing.

Incidence and prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease in Devon, UK

Background and aimsWe sought to define temporal changes in prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in East Devon, UK, in order to facilitate service planning over the next 5 years.MethodsMultiple...

N25 Outcomes of a GP outreach programme to offer colonoscopic surveillance for IBD patients being managed in primary care

Abstract Background Colonoscopic surveillance in IBD patients can reduce the development of colorectal cancer (CRC) and the rate of CRC-associated death. We recently reported that 27% of IBD patients living in East Devon are managed exclusively in primary care of whom about 23% maybe eligible for colonoscopic surveillance. We devised an outreach programme, whereby we invited primary care physicians to enrol these patients in a colonoscopic surveillance programme. Methods In December 2017, we contacted 37 general practices, where 161 patients with UC who were eligible for surveillance had been identified. Each practice was sent a letter explaining the goals of the project, a link to the National Institute for Healthcare and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidance for CRC surveillance in IBD patients and patient information booklets. We informed the practices of their eligible patients and asked them to refer patients for secondary care IBD consults if appropriate. We included an outcome form that captured whether the patient was referred, was deemed inappropriate for surveillance, had surveillance elsewhere, had declined surveillance, or was no longer registered at the practice. Results Sixty-five percent of practices (24/37) responded and we received responses for 57 of 161 (35%) potentially eligible patients. Thirty-five (61%) patients were referred to our IBD service; 7 (12%) patients declined surveillance; 7 (12%) patients were deemed by their GP to be unfit for surveillance and 5 (10%) were no longer registered at the identified GP practice; 2 (4%) had surveillance arranged elsewhere and 1 (2%) patient had died. Amongst the 35 patients referred to secondary care; 22 (63%) underwent surveillance colonoscopy, 12 (34%) declined surveillance after discussion or did not attend their booked appointments and one is awaiting colonoscopy. Half of patients who had a colonoscopy had active inflammation. We diagnosed one CRC He was an elderly man with a locally invasive signet ring caecal tumour, without distant metastases, who went onto to have a curative right hemicolectomy without complication. Conclusion Patients with longstanding IBD are frequently managed exclusively in primary care and maybe overlooked for colonoscopic CRC surveillance. There is a need to implement processes to facilitate identification and recall of patients eligible for surveillance across primary and secondary care.

P250 Root cause analysis to identify missed opportunities for the diagnosis of colorectal cancer in inflammatory bowel disease

Abstract Background Colonoscopic surveillance in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients leads to earlier detection of colorectal cancer (CRC) and reduces CRC-associated deaths. However, adherence to international surveillance guidelines in practice is poor. Consequently, we hypothesised that patients with IBD-associated CRC had suboptimal endoscopic surveillance and conducted a root cause analysis of IBD-associated CRC diagnoses to identify the scale of missed surveillance opportunities. Methods We calculated the incidence of CRC in our IBD population between 1998 and 2019 by cross-referencing the hospital’s CRC and IBD databases. All cases were adjudicated by IBD specialists to determine eligibility for surveillance using guidelines contemporaneous to the time of CRC diagnosis. For all eligible patients, a root cause analysis was conducted to determine whether there were missed opportunities to detect CRC. Results Our search identified 94 patients with IBD and CRC. We excluded 16 patients diagnosed with IBD after the diagnosis of CRC. The overall incidence of IBD-associated CRC in East Devon from 1998 to 2019 was 0.17% per year (95% CI 0.14 %–0.18%) with no statistically significant change seen over time (R2= 0.15, p = 0.11). Fifty-one patients (65%) were male, the median age at diagnosis of CRC was 69 years (range 21–88) and the median duration of IBD prior to CRC diagnosis was 21 years (range 0–57). After adjudication, 42 (54%) patients were eligible for surveillance at the time of CRC diagnosis. Correctly timed surveillance colonoscopy identified 5/42 (12%) CRC cases, but failed to identify CRC in 6 (14%) patients with so-called interval cancers. Overdue surveillance colonoscopy identified a further 4/42 (10%) cases. Overall, 27/42 (64%) IBD-associated CRC cases were classified as having had missed opportunities for surveillance. Root cause analyses found that 10 (37%) patients had not been offered surveillance despite on-going secondary care follow-up. Four (15%) patients had a delayed diagnosis of CRC because of a failure to account for the adequacy of previous colonoscopic and histological findings. Thirteen patients were managed exclusively in primary care including 7 (26%) patients who had been discharged back to primary care without a plan for surveillance and 6 (22%) patients who were never known to secondary care. Conclusion Two-thirds of patients who were eligible for surveillance had a missed opportunity to diagnose CRC. In most cases, the patient was known to the secondary care IBD service but no recommendation for surveillance was made. There is a need to implement processes to facilitate identification and recall of patients eligible for surveillance across primary and secondary care.

The Jurassic Coast: Geoscience and education – An overview

The Dorset and East Devon Coast World Heritage Site (the Jurassic Coast) was inscribed in 2001 on the UNESCO World Heritage Site List. The inscription recognises the Jurassic Coast’s outstanding universal value in the history of geological science and thought, particularly its special contribution to Mesozoic palaeontology and stratigraphy and evidence of coastal processes and geomorphology. This Special Issue of the Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association celebrates this Site’s unique contribution to geosciences and education, and sets the scene for further research and collaboration.

The Jurassic Coast Story Book: An approach to geoheritage interpretation from the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site

The World Heritage status of the Jurassic Coast has important implications for how the geoheritage of the site is communicated to audiences. UNESCO defines World Heritage Sites as places with Outstanding Universal Value to all people that must be preserved for future generations. Building relationships between people and place is key to conservation and on the Jurassic Coast that is delivered by providing audiences with physical, intellectual and emotional access to the Site. Heritage interpretation offers an effective way to develop these connections and create diverse ways for people to engage with the unique Earth Science stories that underpin the World Heritage Status of the Dorset and East Devon Coast. This paper reflects on the approach to interpretation taken by the Jurassic Coast Team and explores the ways in which geoheritage is a challenging subject to interpret. Practitioners on the Jurassic Coast have more recently developed an interpretive approach to help overcome these difficulties. Three categories of geoheritage stories were identified (Landscape, Cultural geology and Earth History) and three interpretive principles were devised (perspective, intimacy and imagination) as a way of scoping out a relevant emotional context for interpretive content. This approach laid the foundation for the development of a new interpretation framework for the Jurassic Coast – The Jurassic Coast Story Book, which will be subject to ongoing testing and evaluation by the new organisation leading on the protection and promotion of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site; Jurassic Coast Trust.

Management of claw horn lesions; a practitioner's guide through the literature

The authors of this article are members of the Cattle Lameness Academy, part of Synergy Farm Health, a veterinary practice covering Dorset, Somerset and East Devon. Following on from a recent and comprehensive review of foot trimming technique ( Manning et al, 2016 ), the current authors were invited to discuss the evidence base for current foot trimming interventions, claw horn lesion treatments and specifically how these can inform clinical practice. The evidence pertaining to claw horn lesion treatments was reviewed by Potterton et al (2012) although several key studies have been published since. Additionally, a recent review of how statistics have improved our understanding of the lameness disease process has also been published ( Randall et al, 2018a ). The purpose of the current article is therefore to provide the practitioner with a guide through key pieces of literature, highlight the problems that arise from gaps in the literature and discuss the methods that we can adopt to manage lameness when the reviewed literature is scarce.

The stratigraphy of the Gault and Upper Greensand Formations (Albian stage, Cretaceous) of the Dorset and East Devon Coast World Heritage Site, U.K.

The Upper Greensand Formation, in part mainly underlain by the Gault Formation and overlain by the Chalk Group, has extensive cliff outcrops in the Dorset and East Devon Coast World Heritage Site (WHS). The argillaceous Gault, up to 20 m thick in the Isle of Purbeck, is poorly exposed due to its involvement in extensive landslides, but the exposures of Upper Greensand are the most complete in England. The Gault (Middle Albian) rests unconformably on progressively older Jurassic and Triassic strata when traced westwards and becomes more arenaceous in the same direction. On the east Devon coast, the Upper Greensand comprises up to 55 m of sandstones and calcarenites that were deposited in fully marine, shallow-water environments. The formation is divided into three members there (Foxmould, Whitecliff Chert and Bindon Sandstone) each bounded by a prominent erosion surface. The full thickness of the Upper Greensand, up to 60 m, was formerly exposed in cliffs in the Isle of Purbeck in and adjacent to the steeply dipping limb of the Purbeck Monocline. The lower (Foxmould) part of the succession is similar to that in east Devon, but the upper part (White Nothe Member) is lithologically different and probably the correlative of only the Bindon Sandstone. Much of the fauna of the Gault and Upper Greensand of the WHS is not age-diagnostic with the result that the ages of parts of the succession are still poorly known. However, diverse ammonite assemblages recorded from a few thin beds in the lower and highest parts of the succession show that all except one of the Albian ammonite zones is present.

The stratigraphy of the mid Cretaceous (Albian) Upper Greensand Formation of the Wessex Basin and South West England, UK

The Upper Greensand Formation, mostly capped by the Chalk, crops out on the edges of a broad, dissected plateau in Devon, west Dorset and south Somerset and has an almost continuous outcrop that runs from the Isle of Purbeck to the Vale of Wardour in south Wiltshire. The Formation is well exposed in cliffs in east Devon and the Isle of Purbeck, but is poorly exposed inland. It comprises sandstones and calcarenites with laterally and stratigraphically variable amounts of carbonate cement, glauconite and chert. The sedimentology and palaeontology indicate deposition in marginal marine-shelf environments that were at times subject to strong tidal and wave-generated currents. The formation of the Upper Greensand successions in the region was influenced by penecontem-poraneous movements on major fault zones, some of which are sited over E-W trending Variscan thrusts in the basement rocks and, locally, on minor faults. Comparison of the principal sedimentary breaks in the succession with the sequence boundaries derived from world-wide sea-level curves suggests that local tectonic events mask the effects of any eustatic changes in sea level. The preserved fauna is unevenly distributed, both laterally and stratigraphically. Bivalves, gastropods and echinoids are common at some horizons but are not age-diagnostic. Ammonites are common at a few stratigraphically narrowly defined horizons, but are rare or absent throughout most of the succession. As a result, the age of parts of the succession is still poorly known.

Late Cretaceous stratigraphy, sediments and structure: Gems of the Dorset and East Devon Coast World Heritage Site (Jurassic Coast), England

Extraordinary, long-distance litho-marker beds such as the Lewes and Shoreham Tubular Flints and associated marl seams and fossils, recognised in cliff exposures and cliff-fall boulders, are keys to unlocking the stratigraphy and tectonic structures in the Late Cretaceous of the Dorset and East Devon Coast World Heritage Site (Jurassic Coast). Durdle Cove is a special gem exposing the Lewes and Seaford Chalk stratigraphy where new marker beds are identified and sediments and tectonic structures provide clues to timing of movements that produced a Late Cretaceous pericline which grew into a Miocene monocline along the line of the underlying Purbeck Reverse Fault. During ‘inversion’ along this fault some Late Cretaceous Chalk formations were in part or completely ‘lost’ (e.g. Middle Turonian New Pit Chalk Formation) and others were condensed (e.g. Late Santonian and Early Campanian Newhaven Chalk Formation). Excavation of the A354 road cutting at the Lower Bincombe Farm, has greatly added to the stratigraphical records of Late Cretaceous fossils in South Dorset, especially Coniacian and Early Campanian inoceramid bivalves and the various stratigraphically specific forms of the Late Santonian to Early Campanian echinoid fossil Echinocorys scutata spp. not recorded before in this coastline. The very large bivalve fossil Platyceramus sp. provides clues to chalk sea-floor environments.

Arm hooks of coleoid cephalopods from the Jurassic succession of the Wessex Basin, Southern England

The Jurassic succession of the Wessex Basin – especially that cropping out within the Dorset and East Devon Coast World Heritage Site – contains important lagerstätten for coleoid cephalopods. The Blue Lias and Charmouth Mudstone formations of West Dorset, the Oxford Clay Formation of North Wiltshire and the Kimmeridge Clay Formation of Purbeck have provided large numbers of important body fossils that inform our knowledge of coleoid palaeobiology, including the hooks present in the arms. Isolated hooks are also found in the processed residues studied by micropalaeontologists and these occurrences can be used – in some cases – to record the presence of key taxa in the absence of well-preserved body fossils. While some hook morphotypes can be attributed to known species, there are many forms of hook described where the parent animal remains unknown. The present state of our knowledge of the Jurassic assemblages in the Wessex Basin is presented and remaining issues identified.

A Medieval Building and its Contents at Island Farm, Ottery St Mary, East Devon: excavations in 2014

A Medieval Building and its Contents at Island Farm, Ottery St Mary, East Devon: excavations in 2014

The stratigraphy of the Permo-Triassic rocks of the Dorset and East Devon Coast World Heritage Site, U.K.

An almost complete late Permian and Triassic succession c. 1300 m thick is exposed in the cliffs between Exmouth and Lyme Regis in the Dorset and East Devon Coast World Heritage Site, U.K. All except the youngest part of the succession was deposited in terrestrial environments that include alluvial fans, aeolian sand dunes, braided rivers and playa-lakes. The succession of environments with time not only reflects the denudation of the Variscan mountains that lay to the west and south in the Cornubian and Armorican massifs, but also responses to periods of tectonic uplift and subsidence, and to long- and short-term climatic and associated biotic changes. Notwithstanding the almost continuous, readily accessible exposures in the cliffs and intertidal areas, few of the formations have yielded any age-diagnostic fossils with the result that much of the succession cannot be dated with certainty. The Permo-Triassic boundary has been placed in the lower part of the succession on the basis of magnetostratigraphy and the same method has been used to quantify some of the stage boundaries and the principal tectonic breaks in the succession.

The stratigraphy of the Upper Greensand Formation (Albian, Cretaceous) of the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset, UK

AbstractAt its maximum development in the type area on the Devon coast, the Upper Greensand Formation comprises up to 55 m of sandstones and calcarenites with laterally and stratigraphically variable amounts of carbonate cement, glauconite and chert that were deposited in fully marine, shallow-water environments. The formation is divided into three members, in ascending order the Foxmould, Whitecliff Chert and Bindon Sandstone, each of which is bounded by a prominent erosion surface that can be recognised throughout the western part of the Wessex Basin. The full thickness of the formation, up to 60 m, was formerly well exposed in cliffs in the Isle of Purbeck in the steeply dipping limb of the Purbeck Monocline. The upper part of the succession is highly condensed in comparison with the Devon succession and exhibits lateral variations over distances of hundreds of metres that are probably related to penecontemporaneous fault movements. Much of the fauna is not age-diagnostic with the result that the ages of parts of the succession are still poorly known. However, the Isle of Purbeck sections contain diverse ammonite faunas at a few stratigraphically well-defined levels that enable the succession to be correlated with that of east Devon and west Dorset.

In this issue of Weather

This issue includes a great variety of meteorological topics, including fog forecasting, the measurement of climatic changes as reflected in soil temperatures, the flooding from a thunderstorm, the need to conserve water in a desert region, the communicationnof uncertainty and the relationship of snow and ice with literature in both East and West. Fog forecasting remains difficult for forecasters: numerical models provide some guidance, but both empirical and numerical methods have significant deficiencies. To add to well-established empirical methods, we start with a revised treatment that should aid forecasts of radiation fog, as explained by Anne Barber and Matt Woods in ‘The adapted Middle Wallop technique: a new method of forecasting the fog point’ on p. 255. On p. 260 we move on to an examination of soil temperatures as markers of climate, as described by J Webb, Barbara Amon, Madhu Subedi and Michael Fullen in ‘Temporal changes in soil temperature at Wolverhampton, UK and Hohe Warte, Vienna, Austria 1976–2010’. Rising temperature is evident in their results, but to varying degrees. It will be interesting to see how these measurements continue to change – a marker that is insulated, at least to some extent, from short-period variation. M. Lickiss, K. J. Mulder, A. Black, A. J. Charlton-Perez, R. A. McCloy and R. Chandler look at how forecasters treat the complexity of their science and the associated uncertainty in ‘Developing a quick guide on presenting data and uncertainty’ on p. 266. Getting an appropriate balance, so that the customer knows what is meant, but weather is neither under-, nor over-forecast, remains a difficulty and this paper describees a suitable methodology. Ice and snow have featured in the literature of both East and West, often in an alegorical way. Hisami Nakamura and Julyan Cartwright have already described the early history of ice and snow described in literature in the first two parts of their series. On p. 272, ‘Hot ice and wondrous strange snow – a history of ice and snow – part 3’ they move on, concentrating on Twentieth Century poetry and novels. Just over 20 years ago, heavy thundery rain fell in West Dorset and parts of Devon, as described by Andrew Sibley in ‘Severe thunderstorm and flooding in East Devon on 7 August 1997’ on p. 276. Andrew presents the development of the storm and its effects clearly and the requirements – as well as possible limitations – are evident. On p. 280, we move on to ‘Methodology for the determination of trends for climatic and hydrometric parameters upstream of the Dez Dam’ by A. Adib, A. Navaseri and B. Shenasa. Iran – despite its mountainous interior – is a desert contry and the south of the nation sources much of its water from reservoirs. The expected water levels are strongly dependent on precipitation, so it is increasingly necessary to measure river flow and relate it to other meteorological measurements – especially in a time of changing climate.

Severe thunderstorm and flooding in East Devon on 7 August 1997

Severe thunderstorm and flooding in East Devon on 7 August 1997

‘The Official Feast’: cultural tensions in U.K. carnival

This paper reveals how U.K. street carnival is located within policy discourses that facilitate notions of creative economy, inter-place competition and the representation of institutionally-preferred versions of local, regional and national place-identity. The paper draws on ethnographic research within two community town carnivals and the professional Battle for the Winds carnival performances that launched the 2012 Olympic sailing at Weymouth. It considers the evolution of policy-driven carnival vocabularies that were designed to articulate preferred ‘Jurassic Coast’ and Olympic place identities for the south-west U.K. during 2012, and their effect on two vernacular, community street carnivals in East Devon and Dorset. The paper exposes the cultural tension between these vernacular events and the ‘official feast’ of Jurassic Coast and Olympic carnival, in terms of their performance of contradictory place-identities and contested notions of artistic community. It describes the popular challenge to aesthetic hegemony that these community carnivals presented during 2012. Finally, the author argues for a reassessment of the artistic value of vernacular carnivals, and affirms their status as a culture of resistance that creates alternative, sometimes inconvenient, symbolic constructions of community and place to those preferred by institutional actors operating within a neo-liberal discourse of inter-place competition.

What is the relationship between age and deprivation in influencing emergency hospital admissions? A model using data from a defined, comprehensive, all-age cohort in East Devon, UK

ObjectivesTo clarify the relationship between social deprivation and age as two factors associated with emergency admissions to hospital.DesignEmergency admissions for 12 months were analysed for patients in the NHS NEW...