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North Road Quarry

North Road, Bath.

The exposure contains two features of special interest.

The site contains an exposure of Oolite, which at this point is

cambered towards Smallcombe Vale, a tributary of the Avon

Valley. The section shows a very clear example of dip-and-fault

structure, where joint-bounded blacks of Oolite have individually

tilted downslope at an angle from the horizontal greater than that

of the slope surface itself. Thus contacts between adjacent blocks

appear as normal faults heading upslope, with a small apparent

downthrow on the upslope side.

Also of special interest at this site are the Pleistocene 'plateau-

gravels' made up of flint, chert, limestone, coal, shales, sandstone

and conglomerate, sometimes in a silty matrix, sometimes clast-

supported. These are preserved here in solution cavities and

fissures in the Great Oolite limestones. The deposits are of great

antiquity, and both fluvial and glacial origins have been

postulated for them by past workers. This is the best exposure of

plateau-deposits in the Bath area and as such is of considerable

importance for the understanding of the Pleistocene sequence in

the Avon Valley.

Alternative Names: None recorded.

Notes: Status: Geological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).

Also see Bath University fissures.