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Portsdown Hill is a long chalk ridge in Hampshire, England. The highest point of the hill lies within Fort Southwick at 131m above sea level. The ridge offers good views to the south over Portsmouth, the Solent, Hayling Island and Gosport, with the Isle of Wight beyond. The hill is on the mainland, just to the north of Ports Creek, which separates the mainland from Portsea Island, on which lies the main part of the city of Portsmouth, one of the United Kingdom's main naval bases. To the north lies the Forest of Bere, with the South Downs visible in the distance. Butser Hill can be seen on a clear day. The hill is formed from an inlier of chalk which has been brought to the surface by an east–west upfold of the local strata known as the Portsdown Anticline.
The Chalk Group is the lithostratigraphic unit which contains the Upper Cretaceous limestone succession in southern and eastern England. The same or similar rock sequences occur across the wider northwest European chalk 'province'. It is characterised by thick deposits of chalk, a soft porous white limestone, deposited in a marine environment.
Dorset is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. Covering an area of 2,653 square kilometres (1,024 sq mi); it borders Devon to the west, Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north-east, and Hampshire to the east. The great variation in its landscape owes much to the underlying geology, which includes an almost unbroken sequence of rocks from 200 to 40 million years ago (Mya) and superficial deposits from 2 Mya to the present. In general, the oldest rocks appear in the far west of the county, with the most recent (Eocene) in the far east. Jurassic rocks also underlie the Blackmore Vale and comprise much of the coastal cliff in the west and south of the county; although younger Cretaceous rocks crown some of the highpoints in the west, they are mainly to be found in the centre and east of the county.
The geology of Hampshire in southern England broadly comprises a gently folded succession of sedimentary rocks dating from the Cretaceous and Palaeogene periods. The lower (early) Cretaceous rocks are sandstones and mudstones whilst those of the upper (late) Cretaceous are the various formations which comprise the Chalk Group and give rise to the county's downlands. Overlying these rocks are the less consolidated Palaeogene clays, sands, gravels and silts of the Lambeth, Thames and Bracklesham Groups which characterise the Hampshire Basin.
Beacon Hill, Warnford is a 46.4-hectare (115-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest west of Warnford in Hampshire. It is a Nature Conservation Review site, and an area of 40.1 hectares is a national nature reserve. There is a round barrow cemetery dating to the Late Neolithic or Bronze Age on the hill, and this is a scheduled monument.
Chilcomb is a small village and civil parish in the English county of Hampshire 3 miles (4.8 km) east of Winchester and includes the South Downs Way long-distance footpath.
The London Basin is an elongated, roughly triangular sedimentary basin approximately 250 kilometres (160 mi) long which underlies London and a large area of south east England, south eastern East Anglia and the adjacent North Sea. The basin formed as a result of compressional tectonics related to the Alpine orogeny during the Palaeogene period and was mainly active between 40 and 60 million years ago.
The Hampshire Basin is a geological basin of Palaeogene age in southern England, underlying parts of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Dorset, and Sussex. Like the London Basin to the northeast, it is filled with sands and clays of Paleocene and younger ages and it is surrounded by a broken rim of chalk hills of Cretaceous age.
The geology of East Sussex is defined by the Weald–Artois anticline, a 60 kilometres (37 mi) wide and 100 kilometres (62 mi) long fold within which caused the arching up of the chalk into a broad dome within the middle Miocene, which has subsequently been eroded to reveal a lower Cretaceous to Upper Jurassic stratigraphy. East Sussex is best known geologically for the identification of the first dinosaur by Gideon Mantell, near Cuckfield, to the famous hoax of the Piltdown man near Uckfield.
The Usk Inlier is a domed outcrop of rock strata of Silurian age in Monmouthshire in south-eastern Wales. It is located in the countryside between the towns of Caerleon and Pontypool and the village of Raglan. The longer axis of the dome or 'pericline', often referred to as the Usk Anticline, is aligned north–south. The inlier is largely surrounded by a sequence of Old Red Sandstone rocks of Devonian age, though both these and the Silurian rocks are largely obscured by superficial deposits.
The Winchester-East Meon Anticline is one of a series of parallel east–west trending folds in the Cretaceous chalk of Hampshire. It lies at the western end of the South Downs, immediately to the north of the Hampshire Basin and south-east of Salisbury Plain.
The Winchester-King's Somborne Syncline is one of a series of parallel east-west trending folds in the Cretaceous chalk of Hampshire. It lies at the western end of the South Downs, immediately to the north of the Winchester-East Meon Anticline and east of Salisbury Plain.
The Stockbridge Anticline is one of a series of parallel east-west trending folds in the Cretaceous chalk of Hampshire. It lies at the western end of the South Downs, immediately to the north of the Winchester-King's Somborne Syncline and east of Salisbury Plain.
The Dean Hill Anticline is an east-west trending fold in the Cretaceous chalk of Hampshire, England. It lies immediately to the north of the Hampshire Basin and south of Salisbury Plain.
The Alderbury-Mottisfont Syncline is an east–west trending fold in the Cretaceous chalk of Hampshire. It lies to the north of the Dean Hill Anticline and south of Salisbury Plain.
The geology of West Sussex in southeast England comprises a succession of sedimentary rocks of Cretaceous age overlain in the south by sediments of Palaeogene age. The sequence of strata from both periods consists of a variety of sandstones, mudstones, siltstones and limestones. These sediments were deposited within the Hampshire and Weald basins. Erosion subsequent to large scale but gentle folding associated with the Alpine Orogeny has resulted in the present outcrop pattern across the county, dominated by the north facing chalk scarp of the South Downs. The bedrock is overlain by a suite of Quaternary deposits of varied origin. Parts of both the bedrock and these superficial deposits have been worked for a variety of minerals for use in construction, industry and agriculture.
This article describes the geology of the New Forest, a national park in Hampshire, in Southern England.
The geology of the Peak District National Park in England is dominated by a thick succession of faulted and folded sedimentary rocks of Carboniferous age. The Peak District is often divided into a southerly White Peak where Carboniferous Limestone outcrops and a northerly Dark Peak where the overlying succession of sandstones and mudstones dominate the landscape. The scarp and dip slope landscape which characterises the Dark Peak also extends along the eastern and western margins of the park. Although older rocks are present at depth, the oldest rocks which are to be found at the surface in the national park are dolomitic limestones of the Woo Dale Limestone Formation seen where Woo Dale enters Wye Dale east of Buxton.
The geology of the South Downs National Park in South East England comprises a gently folded succession of sedimentary rocks from the Cretaceous and early Palaeogene periods overlain in places by a range of superficial deposits from the last 2.6 million years. Whereas the South Downs are formed from the Late Cretaceous age chalk, the South Downs National Park extends into the Weald to the north of the range and thereby includes older rock strata dating from the Early Cretaceous including sandstones and mudstones. The youngest solid rocks are found on the southern fringes of the National Park in the eastern extension of the Hampshire Basin and include sand, silt and clay deposited during the Palaeocene and Eocene epochs.
References
- ↑ Toghill, P. 2000 The Geology of Britain: an introduction Crowood Press, Marlborough Wilts p166
- ↑ Melville, R.V. and Freshney, E.C. 1982 British Regional Geology: The Hampshire Basin and adjoining areas IGS/NERC, London p116 & 121
- ↑ British Geological Survey 1998 Fareham England and Wales sheet 316 Solid and drift geology. 1:50,000 (Keyworth, Nottingham: BGS)
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