Happy New Year

Making Tracks in Kirklees - 2003

Huddersfield Geology Group has been asked to participate in the Making Tracks in Kirklees, 2003 programme.

Each summer we lead geological walks around interesting routes in the local area. Last year the two evening walks were very successful, with 12-20 participants for a stroll around the centre of Huddersfield looking at the building stones, and for a visit to Folly Dolly Falls, Meltham. Both were blessed with excellent weather so we all enjoyed ourselves.

If anyone would like to run a short walk this summer from May to August to an area they know and enjoy, please let Alison know before the end of January.

Visit to The National Stone Centre, Sunday 17th November 2002

Nine members assembled at the Centre and were met by Moira the guide for the day who is an employee at the Centre.

The Centre is on the site of six disused limestone quarries known as the Coalhills complex of Brigantian age, located on the eastern flank of an anticline on the edge of the Derbyshire dome. The stone was quarried for use in the building of the M1 motorway in the 1960s. 120 shafts remain on the site from the time when galena was quarried.

The first location was Coalhills Quarry east. The lagoonal limestone, part of the Eyan limestone, contains plenty of easily observed fossils-brachiopod, crinoids, bryozoans as well as veining of minerals, particularly barite, galena, and fluorite. Banded chert is also scattered through the section.

Between this quarry and Coal Hills Quarry is a rich crinoid bed on the edge of an horizontally-accreted mud mound. This was explained as being a sub-tidal location and part of the Monsal Dale limestone. (Eyan limestone over lies Monsal Dale limestone).

The group could not find microbial mats, the result of cyanobacterial action, although such mats are reported. A nearby paleosol is evidence of variation in sea level. Plenty of fossils were also visible.

The next location in Lower Coal Hills quarry contains more reef limestone with the usual fossils at the northern edge. This translates into deep-water limestone formed inorganically to the south of the quarry. A vertically accreted mud mound exists in the eastern wall at the edge of the reef section. A thin layer of volcanic rock can be seen at the southern end of the quarry.

The next location at Shaws Quarry has an old unused lime kiln which ceased production in 1968 when the quarry closed.

The Centre has an unusual display of stone walling in the Millennium wall. Groups of dry stone wall builders from all over the Great Britain combined to build a memorial wall made up of many sections representing the different styles and stones found across the country.

A good turn out by members and a good guide helped to make the visit an enjoyable and worthwhile day out.

Forthcoming Events

Geological train to Chapeltown, Sheffield to visit Geo Supplies.
Saturday 18th January

The train leaves Huddersfield station at 13.27 and returns at 17.04. The journey each way takes about an hour and we will have an hour to browse at Geo Supplies, which is a short walk from the station in Chapeltown.
Geo Supplies sells equipment, such as hammers and lenses, and has a huge range of geological books, both textbooks, geological guide-books and general interest geology books.

A 5-page leaflet, which is a guide to the Geology of the Huddersfield-Chapeltown train line, will be available so that you can see some geology from the train window as we travel.

FAULTS, EARTHQUAKES AND VOLCANOES
2.00 - 4.30pm in the School of Earth Sciences

Meet at 1.45pm in the car park of W. T. Knowles and Sons Pipe Works, Elland Road, Elland.

Will Watts illustrated talk: The Burgess Shale - the remarkable fossils which show evolution of early forms of life.