PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 
1920 
186 
successively, Woolhope Limestone, Wenlock Shales, Wenlock 
Limestone, Ludlow beds and Downton Sandstone, the last being 
overlain by Old Red Sandstone. 
In 1852 Sedgwick gave the name May Hill Sandstone to the 
upper part of the beds which had been called Caradoc, but left 
undetermined the age of the coarser sandstones at the base of 
the succession. 1 He found no fossils in these lower beds, and 
maintained that those occurring in the higher ones showed that 
they were not of Caradoc age. 
Later the Survey accepted these conclusions as far as the 
upper beds were concerned, but included all the beds seen below 
the W oolhope Limestone under the name Llandovery Sandstone, 
and spoke of them as of Silurian age. 
In 1853 Strickland wrote of the occurrence of Ludlow and 
Downton beds, amongst which he found a bone bed, in the 
railway cutting two miles to the south of Longhope. 2 
In 1900 Dr. Callaway described beds seen in a quarry near 
Huntley to the east of May Hill which he considered were 
Precambrian. 3 Since Strickland’s paper no further work seems 
to have been done on the May Hill Silurians, and it is the 
purpose of this paper to describe them in detail and to give an 
account of their field relations after mapping the district on 
the six-inch scale. 
II. General Succession and Structure. 
Old Red Sandstone. 
I White sandstones with bands of grey 
Thickness 
in feet. 
Downton Castle I shales in the north 
sandstones in the 
200 
11 
Brown sandstones (containing a bone 
bed in the south) 
5 
Ludlow Beds. 
Brown sandy shales and sandstones 
with calcareous bands 
395 
1 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. ix. (1853), p. 221. 
2 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. ix. (1833), p. 11. 
3 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. lvi. (1900), pp. 511-518. 
