| Site of Special Scientific Interest | |
 | |
  Location within Somerset | |
| Area of Search | Somerset |
|---|---|
| Grid reference | ST427272 |
| Coordinates | 51°02′29″N2°49′07″W / 51.04128°N 2.81868°W Coordinates: 51°02′29″N2°49′07″W / 51.04128°N 2.81868°W |
| Interest | Geological |
| Area | 0.5 hectares (0.0050 km2; 0.0019 sq mi) |
| Notification | 1992 |
| Natural England website | |
Langport Railway Cutting (grid reference ST427272 ) is a 0.5 hectare geological Site of Special Scientific Interest at Langport in Somerset, England, notified in 1992. It is a Geological Conservation Review site.
The Ordnance Survey National Grid reference system is a system of geographic grid references used in Great Britain, distinct from latitude and longitude. It is often called British National Grid (BNG).
The hectare is an SI accepted metric system unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides, or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is about 0.405 hectare and one hectare contains about 2.47 acres.
Langport is a small town and civil parish in Somerset, England, 5 miles (8.0 km) west of Somerton in the South Somerset district. The parish has a population of 1,081. Langport is contiguous with Huish Episcopi, a separate parish that includes much of the town's outskirts.
Gravels exposed at Langport Railway Cutting show scour-and-fill structures consistent with braided stream deposition. This site is of importance as one of the few permanently exposed localities for coldstage Pleistocene gravels in south Somerset and more particularly because it is the first site in Britain in which typical calcrete features have been recorded. As such it is of national significance and has considerable research potential.
Gravel is a loose aggregation of rock fragments. Gravel is classified by particle size range and includes size classes from granule- to boulder-sized fragments. In the Udden-Wentworth scale gravel is categorized into granular gravel and pebble gravel. ISO 14688 grades gravels as fine, medium, and coarse with ranges 2 mm to 6.3 mm to 20 mm to 63 mm. One cubic metre of gravel typically weighs about 1,800 kg.
The Pleistocene is the geological epoch which lasted from about 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the world's most recent period of repeated glaciations. The end of the Pleistocene corresponds with the end of the last glacial period and also with the end of the Paleolithic age used in archaeology.
