M.K. HOWARTH 



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Fig. 7 The foreshore at low tide north of Robin Hood's Bay town. L. Bairstow photograph. 1952. taken from the top of the cliff near the northern edge of 

 Fig. 6. The rock outcrops can be seen to have been relatively clean and free of algae and beach deposits at this time. 



Scar' (bed 496) and East Scar (bed 494) opposite the town, and 

 Cowling Scar (bed 474, Double Band) farther out to sea near the 

 bottom edge of the map. The relatively soft beds of the Pyritous 

 Shales around Ground Wyke are the wettest and lowest (relative to 

 sea level) exposed part of the foreshore in the bay, where there is now 

 little or poor rock exposure owing the seaweed, barnacle and mussel 

 bed cover. 



Map 3 (Fig. 8) shows an interesting entity of outcrops around the 

 mouth of Mill Beck, the cliffs that make up 'The Nab' . and the major 

 rock scars on the foreshore to the east. There are three prominent 

 scars here - Low Scar, Middle Scar and High Scar, being the hard, 

 calcified silty shales of beds 447, 449 and 455 respectively. Also 

 notable on this map are Tinkler's Stone and Strickland's Dumps, 

 north of the mouth of Stoupe Beck, and both are named on the larger 

 scale Ordnance Survey maps. Tinkler's Stone lies on bed 462 and is 

 a boulder of very hard grey-brown massive limestone, of undeter- 

 mined origin, but not derived from the Lower Lias. Strickland's 

 Dumps are small, but relatively deep, excavated pools in the dip 

 slope of beds 455.1 and 455.2. The area around Bay Mill and The 

 Nab is shown on a larger scale in Fig. 9. High tides penetrate well into 

 the mouth of Mill Beck between The Nab and the road on the south 

 side of the beck, and sometimes large masses of dead algae partly 

 block or divert the outflow of Mill Beck. However, when the mouth 



"Scar' is a term frequently used in descriptions of Yorkshire coast geology for rock 

 outcrops on the foreshore, which are usually below (but may sometimes be above) the 

 level reached by normal high tides. In Robin Hood's Bay several scars are given formal 

 names on some larger scale maps of the Ordnance Survey, and a few others are newly 

 named in this paper. Such scars are formed by, or at least topped by, single beds of hard 

 rock, and all are intertidal in Robin Hood's Bay. 



and bed of Mill Beck are clear of algae, the underlying beds can be 

 seen from bed 475 at the mouth of the beck, past Bay Mill and up to 

 bed 494 in front of the weir. They were mapped by Bairstow as 

 shown on Fig. 9 in an amount of detail that is too great to be shown 

 clearly on the main map. The face of The Nab. with some individual 

 beds identified, is shown in Fig. 10. 



Map4(Fig. 1 1) features the foreshore north-east of Peter White Cliff 

 where there are exposures down to the lowest beds in Robin Hood's 

 Bay (Fig. 12). At low tides the scars of Low Balk (bed 422; see Fig. 

 13) and the slightly less conspicuous Pseudo Low Balk (bed 424.2) 

 are prominent rock platforms, both of which can normally be reached 

 only by wading through the shallow channels between beds 424 and 

 425 and along the middle part of bed 422.2, which never dry out, 

 even at the lowest spring tides. Bed 447 forms a long scarp face 

 across the whole width of the map in front of Peter White Cliff (Fig. 

 14). On the Ordnance Survey maps, the name High Scar is used for 

 two different beds: one for this bed 447 in front of Peter White Cliff, 

 the other for bed 455 east of Mill Beck. So bed 447 forms both Low 

 Scar east of Mill Beck and the Ordnance Survey's 'High scar' at 

 Peter White Cliff. In view of the possible confusion, the latter use of 

 'High Scar' is not perpetuated here. 



Map 5 (Fig. 15) reaches the south-east corner of the bay, where the 

 Lower Lias succession is truncated by the Peak Fault complex. The 

 Main Peak Fault has a downthrow to the east and a large lateral 

 movement, resulting in Upper Pliensbachian and Toarcian beds on 

 the east abutting the top beds of the Sinemurian and bottom beds of 

 the Lower Pliensbachian on the west. There is a narrow zone of 

 severely shattered beds immediately west of the fault, and minor 

 faults and cracks for some distance farther west. The highest bed 

 exposed on the rock platforms below the cliffs is bed 501.1, the 



