Ailstone
Old Gravel Pit
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The
old gravel pit at Ailstone exposed
sands and gravels deposited by the
Stour (a tributary of the Warwickshire
Avon) which contained an extremely
important Pleistocene interglacial
molluscan fauna.
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Boon's
Quarry
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Precambrian
Caldecote Volcanic Formation and Park
Hill Member of the Hartshill Sandstone
Formation.
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Broom
Railway Cutting
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The
disused railway cutting south of Broom
cuts through gravels of the 2nd
Terrace of the Avon system, which is
believed to date from the last glacial
period.
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Coton
End Quarry
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This
site provides important exposures of
fossiliferous sandstone layers of the
Middle Triassic which accumulated
about 230 million years ago, as sand
dunes in a desert environment.
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Cross
Hands Quarry
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Bajocian
Clypeus Grit laid down during the
Middle Jurassic Period
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Griff
Hill Quarry
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Ordovician sill
intrudes Cambrian Stockingford
Shales.,
Carboniferous
Coal Measures are preserved in fossil
channel deposits. These deposits have
been planed off by Triassic red marls,
which lie unconformably over the bulk
of the sill.
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Guy's
Cliffe
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Middle
Triassic aeolian and river-deposited
sandstones
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Harbury
Quarries
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These
quarries allow a variety of sediments
overlying a Middle Pleistocene
landsurface to be studied and compared
over a wide area. These sediments are
part of the glacial and
glacio-lacustrine complex recognised
in the English Midlands and attributed
to the Wolstonian glaciation.
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High
Close Farm, Snitterfield
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This
site shows a tripartite sequence which
has been recognised over a wide area,
comprising a thick basal gravel
(Baginton-Lillington Gravel), an
overlying sand (Baginton) Sand and a
capping of clays and silts (Wolston
Series).
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Illing's
Trenches
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This
site exposes a section through the
Abbey Shales of the Cambrian period.
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Kingsbury
Brickworks
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Kingsbury
Brickworks is the best known available
site for showing the unconformable
contact between the Upper
Carboniferous Halesowen Formationand
the underlying Etruria Formation. At
Kingsbury the Halesowen Formation
consists mainly of coarse-grained
cross-bedded sandstones which
represent sediments transported from a
land-mass to the south.
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Napton
Hill Quarry
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Napton
Hill exposes an important sequence of
Upper Pliensbachian rocks. Below 2m of
Marlstone Rock Bed, the Margaritatus
Zone is represented by a thin
limestone and clays yielding the zonal
ammonites Amaltheus margaritatus,
Amaltheus subnodosus and Amaltheus
stokesi.
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River
Itchen
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The
Warwickshire Itchen played a
significant role in the development of
the theory of underfit streams that
related change in stream activity to
postglacial climatic change and
reduced discharges. The characteristic
features of underfit valleys are
well-developed at the site and include
sinuosity on a large scale, steep
slopes at the outsides of valley
bends, gentle slopes on the insides
and the smallscale meanders of the
present stream.
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Ryton
and Brandon Gravel Pits
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The
two most southern sections show Avon
Terrace 4 gravels overlying Baginton
Gravel. Over much of this area the
Baginton Gravel is overlain by the
later Avon Terrace 4. In both the
southern two sections the Baginton
Gravel and the terrace deposits are
locally separated by further gravels,
deeply channelled into the former.
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Shrewley
Canal Cutting
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The
canal cutting at Shrewley exposes a
sequence in the Arden Sandstone Member
of the Triassic Period. It forms a
distinctive marker horizon in the
Mercia Mudstone Group of central
England. The sequence comprises an
overall coarsening upwards in the
succession in which grey-green shales
and siltstones with wavy and
lenticular bedding pass into white
fine-grained well sorted dolomitic
sandstones.
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Stretton-on-Fosse
Pit
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This
site consists of two small areas
providing important exposures of a
complex sequence of deposits formed
during the middle Pleistocene Ice
Ages. The lowest deposits consist of
fluvial sands, laid down by a river
and contain mammal remains of
interglacial type, reflecting a phase
of warm climate between major glacial
phases. These are overlain by gravels
containing mammoth remains, thought to
represent a deposit formed at the
onset of a phase of glacial
conditions. Overlying this is an
important sequence of beds attributed
to the Wolstonian glaciation phase of
the Midlands, consisting mainly of
till laid down beneath an ice sheet
with layers of clay formed on the bed
of a lake.
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Waverley
Wood Farm
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This
site provides an important reserve of
an interglacial deposit, uniquely
preserved here beneath the more
widespread local drift sequence. The
interglacial beds occupy a channel cut
in Mercia Mudstone bedrock. They are
overlain by Baginton-Lillington
Gravel, Baginton Sand and Thrussington
Till.
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Wilmcote
Quarry
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This
old quarry shows the best available
section in the ‘Insect Beds’ of the
basal Lias. These rocks are best
developed in Warwickshire and Wilmcote
is the only surviving quarry in the
county showing them.
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Wolston
Gravel Pit
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Wolston
Gravel Pit is the type-locality for
the penultimate cold stage of the
Pleistocene period in Britain, the
Wolstonian, which demonstrates the
Baginton sand, Thrussington Till and
Bosworth Clay members of this type
formation.
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Woodlands
Quarry
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This
disused quarry exposes a sequence of
rocks laid down beneath the sea some
570 million years ago, during late
Precambrian to early Cambrian times,
and is of international significance
because of the early Cambrian fossils
which are found here.
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