The evolution
of the British landscape:
geological and archaeological perspectives
1. Introduction – the geological framework of the British landscape
2. The Early Tertiary volcanoes of the British Isles (58 – 61 BP)
3. Formation of the Alps and their influence on the Tertiary geology
4. The Pleistocene: a landscape transformed (from 1.8 million to
5. Britain after the ice: enter some Stone Age hunters (18,000 –
6. The Neolithic Period and Early Bronze Age: marking out the landscape (4,000 – 1400 BC)
7. The Iron Age: a landscape of hillforts and farms (800 BC – 43 AD)
8. The Romans: a landscape of conquest and exploitation (43 – 410 AD)
9. Late Saxon and Viking periods: revolutions in agriculture and
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Having gathered at the Splash on April 2 for an outing to focus on geological aspects influencing much of the landscape in Herefordshire and Shropshire, the 2014 U Cube Geo. Group left on time at 9.00 a.m. It was dry but fairly misty and we were destined for limited view as we made our way to a Leigh Sinton bypass for observation of the East Malvern Fault from inside our Coach. This fault extends from the Bristol Channel to the Cheshire Plain some 130 miles. Granite and Diorite is thrust upwards inlate carboniferous times (350 million years BP) Silurian sedimentary rocks folded adjacent to the fault and the East Malvern fault in late Permian times formed a boundary of the rift with some 2kms, filling the slowly subsiding basin. The Storridge Church layby stopover revealed that this area to the Cradley (Red Lion!) district is a part focal point of Triassic makeover combining Mercian Mudstone and Bromsgrovian Sandstone.
Proceeding further along the Hereford Road, however, it was important to make one more stop by the Coach on the decline of Fromes Hill .We disembarked at the layby and gathered in the corner of a ploughed field...the Leader assured us that we were on the St.Maugham Formation of the Devonian Period (450 million BP).... Tall people were to stand on the clodges and the little people in front, apparently for health and safety reasons. In fact, Richard thought it might be an opportunity to conduct us in a Choral event but that idea quickly dissipated.
Instead, he launched our attentions to a view, way above the River Frome valley, about the beginnings of the Neath Disturbance making its way Westward for some 60 miles across the Brecons to an area in South Wales that became famous for its Copper and other metals in the 19th Century. The descent visually to the floor of the Valley was structured by Raglan Mudstone at the top with Wenlock Limestone, Coalbrookdale Formation The persistence of its N.E. direction suggest a Caledonian origin, but the main age is Variscan. Tucked behind the agricultural land was the Woolhope Dome a bastion of continuing Geological curiosity.
Clearly the mist held as we peered over the surrounding land and Richard felt reasonably safe from any detailed questioning.
Back to the Coach and then on our journey to Bromfield and The Ludlow Food Centre (by 10.30 a.m) passing genuine moraines and oddly shaped tump on the way. This is also a very good stop if visiting Ludlow Races.
Leaving here we progressed towards Church Stretton and diverted to a valley on the East side of the Long Mynd carved out by Glacial movement during the Devensian Ice Age of the Quarternary Era (10,000 years BP). We could see how the Ice had moulded the landscape, leaving us spectating through the coach windows, well above a small river that was continuing to cut its course through the Herefordshire countryside to join other watercourses to the South.
We rejoined the A49 at Marshbrook but not before Richard had reminded us of his family Station Master roots near here.....one side of the Station platform was in Herefordshire, the other in Shropshire. Logistically speaking though, this was a hugely significant geophysical factor, as our Leader may not have been with us on this day.
Marshbrook was a supposed meeting place of the Welsh and Irish sea ice, many hundreds of feet thick, as it threw up clumps of boulder-clay, gravel, till and erratics, descending down the Wye, Teme. Clun and Onny and forming moraines near Orelton, north of Leominster.
Onwards to Church Stretton where we were delighted to engage in a circular progress in the area to the North and back. In so doing we were visiting a series of Dunlins, the like of which we may have seen in the Volcanic Regions of the Les Puys in Southern France. We stopped at another layby, the Coach moved forwards then back so our leader had the view he needed to assure that these Dunlins were full of boulder-clay, cut away and heaped up by a Glacial sheet of ice that turned them into what one might describe, as a keen amateur.... dumplings or small burial mounds. Was there, by any stretch of the imagination, an occasional rocky outcrop or were they all moraines? I believed our Leader but the Coach could not move sideways, so it was on to the Church Stretton Fault and The Lawley Caer Caradog...the rain set in and an ascent became more unlikely which was just as well, as, given the severity of the incline of the Uriconian Volcanics, some of us may not have made it back to the Coach.
Eventually, we progressed to a meander of the Severn not dissimilar to the R. Wye at Symonds Yat and then it was on to lunch in the car park at Ironbridge Gorge. Here the River Severn changed course at one time and redirected itself to the North when it found its present course obstructed by the Gorge but eventually Sabrina triumphed over the blocked artery and made her way through the Straits of Malvern and into the Bristol Channel.
After lunch we departed at 2 p.m. to Wroxeter via Much Wenlock...no visibility even for The Wrekin...the monks favoured this area decisively as there are two Abbeys at Wenlock and Buildwas. Doubtless the Romans tipped them off!
The visit to the Roman Town at Viroconium with Watling Steet, passing close by, was of two parts....
1.a Museum visit and
2.a conducted tour by guide.
When I visited this site 40 years ago, I was convinced that the Arch, called The Works! which is immediately visible from some distance was the entrance to the Town...in fact it was the access from the Palaestra (called the Basilica nowadays) to The Baths...the onsite pictorial illustration was made to look like a massive structure that resembled a Cathedral. Mosaics were covered over and, disappointingly, none of these were visible. The Roman Villa was a superb interpretational copy of the time, although the Columns from The Forum were somewhat diminished by the below level of the ground, presumably silted up since Roman times and/or by earthworks in preparing the Town House.
The second part of the visit took about 40 minutes and it was explained how a water supply was acquired from higher ground and directed into slightly sloping land that eventually took all the effluent from the Town, with its habitation and industry, down to the River Severn flowing out of Shrewsbury. The Baths, with changing rooms outside, were approached through high doors below a decorated vaulted ceiling with the Hypocaust off to the South East corner. The stacked Tiles were positioned to support a foundation of the floor of the baths allowing other hot draughts to the building. An impressive concreted outdoor swimming pool would have not been out of place in a Town House of more recent vintage.
The shops with potentially covered walkways, reminiscent of the beginnings of monastic cloisters, the Taberna (for board and lodge) plus a wholesome description of the procedures at the baths with strigil and mop to boot ended a fascinating insight into what was a Town Tour of 5% of the Original Civilian and Administrative settlement.
Thanks again to Richard Edwards for a compelling explanation and exposition during the Winter Lectures culminating in the upbeat Spring Field Event. What's below our feet and what we see in the landscape above has possibly given some of us a trilobytic insight that we would hardly have dared to imagine in reality. Should you have even a Protozoic Bank balance......i.e. 545 million pounds....well I'll leave it there!
Carleton Tarr.......8th. of April 2014