Great North Road Research Articles

Metasomatic and Intrusive nepheline-bearing rocks from the Mbozi syenite-gabbro complex, southwestern Tanzania

The Mbozi Complex (20 × 8 miles) is situated on the Great North Road 15 miles east of the Tanzania–Zambia border. It is at least 743 million years old, and is emplaced in Ubendian Gneisses (1800 m.y.) along the northeastern flank of the Tunduma Rift.The oldest rocks in the complex are layered calcic gabbros, with cumulates of iron-rich pyroxenite and bytownite anorthosite. The basic rocks were faulted and deformed prior to the emplacement of alkaline rocks around the perimeter of the complex. The alkaline rocks are saturated with respect to silica near the ends of the complex, but are nepheline-bearing near the center. The larger masses of marginal syenite are magmatic intrusions.Within the basic rocks near the center of the complex is an elliptical zone of feldspathoidal rocks surrounding a core of unaltered gabbro. The rocks in this ring structure are heterogeneous, ranging in composition from slightly altered gabbro, through all intermediate compositions to ijolite, litchfieldite, and rutterite. They have well-developed concentric banding, but vary rapidly in composition and texture along and across strike. Contacts are gradational. The majority of the ring rocks appear to be metasomatized gabbros, but a few persistant, concordant bands of homogeneous litchfieldite are probably intrusive.Assuming no volume change and little change in color index, metasomatism of gabbroic rocks to produce the ring rocks would involve introduction of cations to the standard cell of 160 O ions in the proportion K5 – 9 Na21 – 27 Al−2 – +5 Si−5 – +11 P0 – +4 and removal of Ca14 – 21 Mg11 – 15 Fe2 – 4Ti1 – 2.It is concluded that the ring structure developed above a volatile-rich nepheline syenite, and that the metasomatism was effected by the volatile elements of that magma.

Mother Mary of the Cross: O.D.C.

Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, Third Marquis of Salisbury and three times Prime Minister of Great Britain, was a man of many principles. One of these was that the more public houses you had in a place the fewer people were likely to get drunk; another was that in the town of Bishops Hatfield, over which he ruled with a benevolent and unquestioned authority, the Roman Catholics must be kept on the other side of the railway. The ‘other side’ is all that most people now see of Hatfield, as they rush northwards along the double lanes of the A. i; but in the days when I lived there the Great North Road passed through the middle of the town, and I can remember at least three public houses – one of them the Eight Bells where Bill Sykes ordered his pint after the murder of Nancy – which the eye of an alert traveller might have caught within the space of sixty seconds. To catch sight of the Roman Catholics you would have had to go a mile or two up the St Albans Road where the Oblates of St Charles maintained their unobtrusive Oratory. The old part of the town was dominated by the spire of St Ethelreda’s church, with the Old Palace of the Bishops of Ely, and the great house and park beyond, and the statue of the third Marquis meeting you as you came out of the station. If ‘Establishment’ means anything, it meant everything at Bishops Hatfield.

Rhipicephalus camelopardalis n.sp. (Ixodoidea, Ixodidae), a new species of tick from East African giraffes.

Among the ticks collected by Major E. W. Temple-Boreham from a giraffe at the Talek River, Cis-Mara area of W. Masai, Kenya, in October 1955, were eleven males and eight females which represent an undescribed species of the genus Rhipicephalus. Another female was collected by W. A. Hilton from a giraffe near mile 70 south of Arusha on the Great North Road, Tanganyika, on 10 July 1956, and G. H. Swynnerton collected three males from a giraffe at Nkonko, S. Manyoni district, Tanganyika, on 29 September 1958. The following is a description of these specimens.

Excavations of Ermine Street in Lincolnshire

The course of the Roman road from London to York, today known as Ermine Street, is well attested. Much of it underlies our comparable modern trunk road, the Great North Road (A1), but there are many deviations. To review the East Midland sector, the modern road covers approximately the Roman road from Huntingdon to the south-east gate of the walled town DVROBRIVAE at Water Newton. Here the modern road bears more to the west and leaves the Roman line. This passes through the ancient town as its main street, crosses the river Nene and continues in the same line until, at a point some three miles south-east of Stamford, it bears more westerly, running west-north-west through Burghley Park. It crosses the Great North Road on the western boundary of the park, where it was exposed in 1732 and seen by Stukeley (1883, ii, 269). From this point its course alters to north-west and, after crossing the river Welland, it underlies a suburban road in the western part of Stamford and crosses the Empingham (Oakham) road (A606). North of this it is seen as a boldly-upraised ridge crossing several fields diagonally until, some three-quarters of a mile south-east of Great Casterton, it joins once again the line of the Great North Road and runs parallel to and immediately adjoining the south side of the modern roadway.

Aberford Dykes: the first defence of the Brigantes?

The Roman road from Legioliuna (Castleford) to Calcaria (Tadcaster), and its modern descendant, the Great North Road, cross the Cock Beck at Aberford, eight miles north-east of Leeds, Yorkshire (FIG. I). The crossing is defended by a triple system of southward facing banks and ditches which total some 4½ miles in length. The main bank, distinguished by the steepness of its scarp, still rises to 25 feet above the bottom of its ditch, and shows in places the stonework which originally revetted it.

Zoisite-amphibolite with corundum from Tanganyika

The most striking rock now described occurs in the Northern Province of Tanganyika Territory, just west of the Great North road, and south of the track from Longido to Engare Naibor. A small group of specimens was collected by Mr. A. G. Clough of Industrial Minerals Ltd., and presented to the British Musemn (Natural History) in 1952 (B.M. 1952,133). The outcrops occur in the highly metamorphosed Basement Complex which forms small hills (The Matabatu Mountains) descending, at their margin, by step-faulting to a peneplaned surface cut out of much younger, unconformable volcanics; the faulting in the marginal area of the basement rocks forms the eastern side of the Rift Valley. The basement rock adjacent to the zoisite-amphibolite is usually anamphibolite with conspicuous large, brown-red garnets. The occurrence of this garnet-amphibolite is usually an indication of the proximity of the zoisite-amphibolite.

Ammonites from the upper Oxford Clay at Stangate Hill, near Huntingdon

A Stangate Hill, one mile north of Alconbury Hill and six miles NW. of Huntingdon, when the Great North Road was widened shortly before the 1939 war, a cutting exposed Chalky Boulder Clay resting on Oxford Clay. Lieutenant Edward L. Holt, stationed near by, measured and described the cutting in the early part of 1943. He collected about 236 ammonites, which he submitted to the Sedgwick Museum. They were sent to me by Mr. A. G. Brighton for determination in April 1943, after which a representative collection of about fifty specimens was returned to Lt. Holt, who took them to America. The rest he presented to the Sedgwick Museum. They are well-preserved pyritic casts, and constitute an interesting assemblage of the mariae Zone of the Upper Oxford Clay. After moving to Cambridge in 1947, I collected several times at the cutting, assisted by Prof. W. B. R. King, Mr. A. G. Brighton, Mr. A. E. Gunther and others, and altogether more than 400 ammonites were obtained during 1947-50. The sides and bottom of the cutting still yield ammonites at every visit, but comparison of the new collections with Lt. Holt's shows that few further novelties can be expected. The total number of specimens now collected is 646, belonging to at least twenty species, and it seems desirable that they should be recorded. There are also belemnites (Hibo/ites hastatus), rhynchonellids and a few small gastropods and lamellibranchs. Gryphaea dilatata (J. Sow.) ranges throughout the section, and there is much selenite. Stangate Hill is at the northern edge of a projection of the Boulder Clay plateau, the top of which is here about 155 ft. O.D. The exposures lie between the lOO-f1. and 50-ft. contours as shown on the one-inch Ordnance Survey map (Sheet 134). According to Lt. Holt's measurements, made with a Brunton compass, 23 ft. of beds are exposed, of which 20 ft. is undisturbed Oxford Clay and 3 ft. Boulder Clay. Small pyritised ammonites abound throughout the Oxford Clay and here and there are concentrated at certain levels, but even in

Quernhow: a Food-Vessel Barrow in Yorkshire

The excavation described in this paper was occasioned by the impending destruction of the Quernhow barrow in the course of construction of a new carriage-way on the Great North Road. Proposals for the preservation of the monument had been advanced prior to the last war, but these proving inexpedient, the complete investigation of the structure was requested by the Ancient Monuments Inspectorate of the Ministry of Works, at the instance of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, and the writer invited to supervise the excavation. A generous grant towards the cost of labour having been made by the Ministry and the Society undertaking to meet all other expenses involved, work commenced on 2nd May 1949, and continued for six weeks, four men being employed throughout this period. At no time was the weather ideal, alternating between an exceptionally long dry spell, which made the study of the barrow structure an extremely difficult task, and a period of continuous rain which unfortunately coincided with the investigation of the primary burial complex.

The Great North Road

The Great North Road

A great North road

(1942). A great North road. Journal of The Royal Central Asian Society: Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 129-135.

Horsemen on the great North Road

Horsemen on the great North Road

Horsemen on the Great North Road

Horsemen on the Great North Road

Horsemen on the Great North Road

Horsemen on the Great North Road

Horsemen on the Great North Road

Journal Article Horsemen on the Great North Road Get access A. L. Humphreys A. L. Humphreys 1Devonshire Club, S.W.1 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 180, Issue 21, 24 May 1941, Pages 362–367, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/180.21.362 Published: 24 May 1941

Horsemen on the great North Road

Horsemen on the great North Road

Pepys and the Great North Road

Pepys and the Great North Road

Pepys and the great north road

Pepys and the great north road

Pepys and the Great North Road

Pepys and the Great North Road

Pepys and the Great North Road

Journal Article Pepys and the great north road Get access A. L. Humphreys A. L. Humphreys 1Devonshire Club, S.W.1 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 179, Issue 23, 7 December 1940, Pages 398–402, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/179.23.398 Published: 07 December 1940

Pepys and the Great North Road

Pepys and the Great North Road