GEOLOGY 



The county of Worcester consists for the most part of a wide 

 undulating plain of red Triassic marls and sandstones, and of grey Liassic 

 clays and limestones, overspread in places with sundry superficial gravels. 

 It is bordered on the west by the bold though somewhat tiny mountain 

 range of the Malverns, which rises to a height of 1,394 feet in the 

 Worcestershire Beacon, and extends northwards to the Abberley Hills, 

 which attain a height of 779 feet. On the north the county comprises 

 portions of the Forest of Wyre and South Staffordshire coalfields, while 

 towards the north-east there is again a remnant of a mountainous region 

 in the Lickey Hills, and in the older rocks of Dudley, which appear 

 from beneath coverings of the newer strata. Hence three great groups 

 of rocks are represented ; (i) the older rocks of Malvern, Abberley, the 

 Lickey and Dudley, together with the coalfields ; (2) the Red rocks and 

 Lias of the plains ; and (3) the superficial gravels. With the Lias we 

 may include the Oolitic series, which is represented on Bredon Hill and 

 in some isolated portions of Worcestershire in the northern Cotteswold 

 Hills. 



It has been shown in recent papers by Prof T. T. Groom that 

 the Malvern Hills exhibit all the characteristic features of a folded moun- 

 tain range. There the older rocks have been disturbed and bent into 

 anticlinal folds, and these inverted and faulted have become ' thrust- 

 planes,' whereby older strata have in places been thrust or pushed over 

 newer rocks. In his opinion this ancient range first arose during late 

 Carboniferous times, and was much faulted and denuded before the 

 Permian and Triassic and succeeding deposits were spread over and 

 against it. Consequently there is a great break between the older rocks 

 and the ' New Red ' strata ^ which rest irregularly on any of them, fiUing 

 hollows in their worn surfaces. Along the ranges of the older rocks the 

 denuded anticHnes exhibit portions of formations the most ancient any- 

 where known. These, Archaean or Pre-Cambrian in age, occur on 

 Malvern, at Martley, and at Barnt Green in the Lower Lickey Hills, 

 and they truly form portions of what have been termed by Prof Bonney 

 ' the Foundation-stones of the Earth's Crust.' 



ARCHAEAN 



The geology of the Malvern Hills has naturally attracted the atten- 

 tion of geologists. The earliest description of the hills was that of 

 Leonard Horner (181 1), and the next important account was that of 

 Murchison in his great work on 'The Silurian System' (1839). To John 

 Phillips, however, we are indebted for the earliest elaborate account of 

 this and adjoining tracts.^ Since then the researches of a Worcester man, 

 Dr. Harvey B. Holl,^ of the Rev. W. S. Symonds (formerly Rector of 



^ This term is converiently applied to both Permian and Triassic rocks, as they consist 

 mainly of red strata. 



* ' The Malvern Hills, compared with the Palaeozoic districts of Abberley,' etc., Mem. 

 Geol. Survey, vol. ii., pt. I, 1848 ; see also Geology of Oxford, etc., 1871, p. 58. 



* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxi. p. 72. 



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