Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T00:05:33.022Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The early Palaeozoic evolution of northwest England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

A. H. Cooper ,
D. Millward ,
E. W. Johnson  and
N. J. Soper
A. H. Cooper
Affiliation:
British Geological Survey, Windsor Court, Windsor Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 4HB, U.K.
D. Millward
Affiliation:
British Geological Survey, Windsor Court, Windsor Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 4HB, U.K.
E. W. Johnson
Affiliation:
British Geological Survey, Windsor Court, Windsor Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 4HB, U.K.
N. J. Soper
Affiliation:
Department of Earth Sciences, The University, Leeds LS2 9JT, U.K.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Lake District and smaller Craven inliers of northwest England contain a Lower Palaeozoic sequence deposited on the Gondwanan side of the Iapetus Ocean, close to the junction with the Tornquist Sea. The Tremadoc to Llanvirn Skiddaw and Ingleton groups are deep water assemblages of turbidite, olistostrome and slump deposits, formed at a continental margin. They experienced uplift and erosion as a precursor to the eruption of two largely subaerial Llandeilo-Caradoc volcanic sequences: the tholeiitic Eycott Volcanic Group in the north and the calc–alkaline Borrowdale Volcanic Group in the central Lake District. The volcanic episodes are the earliest part of a major episode of magmatism, extending through to the early Devonian and responsible for a major batholith underpinning the Lake District. Subsidence in an intra-arc rift zone preserved the subaerial volcanic sequences. A marine transgression marks the base of the Windermere Group, which comprises a mixed carbonate–clastic shelf sequence of Ashgill age, passing upwards through the Silurian into a thick, prograding foreland basin sequence of Ludlow turbidites. Deformation of the Lower Palaeozoic sequences was possibly diachronous from north to south. It is attributed to the late Caledonian (Acadian) Orogeny and resulted in folding, cleavage and thrust development. Granitic intrusions, including those at Shap, Skiddaw and beneath the hydrothermal Crummock Water Aureole, are partly syntectonic and were therefore penecontemporaneous with this deformation event. Some thrust faulting post-dates the intrusive phase. Post-deformation Devonian conglomerates are also present locally.

Type
Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 130 , Issue 5 , September 1993 , pp. 711 - 724
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, P. M. & Cooper, D. C. 1986. The stratigraphy and composition of the Latterbarrow and Redmain sandstones, Lake District, England. Geological Journal 21, 59–76.Google Scholar
Allen, P. M., Cooper, D. C. & Fortey, N. J. 1987. Composite lava flows of Ordovician age in the English Lake District. Journal of the Geological Society, London 144, 945–60.Google Scholar
Arthurton, R. S., Johnson, E. W. & Mundy, D. J. C. 1988. Geology of the country around Settle. Memoir of the British Geological Survey (England & Wales), Sheet 60.Google Scholar
Banham, P. H., Hopper, F. M. W. & Jackson, J. B. 1981. The Gillbrea Nappe in the Skiddaw Group, Cockermouth, Cumbria, England. Geological Magazine 118, 509–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beddoe-Stephens, B. & Mason, P. 1991. The volcanogenetic significance of garnet-bearing minor intrusions within the Borrowdale Volcanic Group, Eskdale area, Cumbria. Geological Magazine 128, 505–16.Google Scholar
Bell, A. M. 1992. The stratigraphy and structure of the Black Combe Inlier; Geological notes to accompany 1;25000 sheet SD18. British Geological Survey Technical Report WAU/92/70.Google Scholar
Bott, M. P. H. 1978. Deep Structure. In The Geology of the Lake District (ed. Moseley, F.), pp. 25–40. Yorkshire Geological Society, Occasional Publication no. 3.Google Scholar
Boulter, C. A. & Soper, N. J. 1973. Structural relationships of the Shap granite. Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society 39, 365–9.Google Scholar
Branney, M. J. 1988. The subaerial setting of the Ordovician Borrowdale Volcanic Group, English Lake District. Journal of the Geological Society, London 145, 887–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Branney, M. J. 1991. Eruption and deposited facies of the Whorneyside Tuff Formation, English Lake District; an exceptionally large-magnitude phreatoplinian eruption. Geological Society of America Bulletin 103, 886–97.Google Scholar
Branney, M. J. & Soper, N. J. 1988. Ordovician volcano-tectonics in the English Lake District. Journal of the Geological Society, London 145, 367–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Branney, M. J. & Suthren, R. J. 1988. High-level peperitic sills from the English Lake District; distinction from block lavas and implications for Borrowdale Volcanic Group stratigraphy. Geological Journal 23, 171–87.Google Scholar
Branney, M. J., Kokelaar, B. P. & McConnell, B. J. 1992. The Bad Step Tuff; a lava-like rheomorphic ignimbrite in a calc-alkaline piecemeal caldera, English Lake District. Bulletin of Volcanology 54, 187–99.Google Scholar
British Geological Survey. 1990. Lor ton and Loweswater Sheet NY 12. Solid and Drift, 1:25000. Southampton: Ordnance Survey for the British Geological Survey.Google Scholar
British Geological Survey. 1991. Devoke Water and Ulpha SD 19. Solid and Drift, 1:25000. Southampton: Ordnance Survey for the British Geological Survey.Google Scholar
Capewell, J. G. 1955. The post-Silurian pre-marine Carboniferous sedimentary rocks of the eastern side of the English Lake District. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 111, 23–46.Google Scholar
Clark, L. 1964. The Borrowdale Volcanic Series between Buttermere and Wasdale, Cumberland. Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society 34, 343–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cocks, L. R. M., Holland, C. H. & Rickards, R. B. 1992. A revised correlation of Silurian rocks in the British Isles. Geological Society of London Special Report no. 21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, A. H. & Molyneux, S. G. 1990. The age and correlation of Skiddaw Group (early Ordovician) sediments in the Cross Fell inlier (northern England). Geological Magazine 127, 147–57.Google Scholar
Cooper, A. H., Millward, D., Johnson, E. W. & Soper, N. J. 1992. Lower Palaeozoic rocks of the Northern Pennines and Lake District: post conference field excursion, 19–21 September, 1992. British Geological Survey Technical Report WA/92/69, 32 pp.Google Scholar
Cooper, A. H. & Hughes, R. A. 1993. Discussion of Millward & Molyneux, 1992. Field and biostratigraphic evidence for an unconformity at the base of the Eycott Volcanic Group in the English Lake District. Geological Magazine 130, 271–2.Google Scholar
Cooper, D. C. & Bradley, A. D. 1990. The ammonium contents of granites in the English Lake District. Geological Magazine 127, 579–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, D. C., Lee, M. K., Fortey, N. J., Cooper, A. H., Rundle, C. C., Webb, B. C. & Allen, P. M. 1988. The Crummock Water aureole: a zone of metasomatism and source of ore metals in the English Lake District. Journal of the Geological Society, London 145, 523–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunham, K. C. & Wilson, A. A. 1985. Geology of the Northern Pennine Orefield: Volume 2, Stainmore to Craven. Economic Memoir of the Geological Survey of Great Britain (England & Wales), Sheets 40, 41, 50.Google Scholar
Eastwood, T., Hollingworth, S. E., Rose, W. C. C. & Trotter, F. M. 1968. Geology of the country around Cockermouth and Caldbeck. Memoir of the Geological Survey of Great Britain (England & Wales), Sheet 23.Google Scholar
Firman, R. J. 1978. Intrusions. In The Geology of the Lake District (ed. Moseley, F.), pp. 146–63. Yorkshire Geological Society Occasional Publication no. 3.Google Scholar
Firman, R. J. & Lee, M. K. 1986. Age and structure of the concealed English Lake District batholith and its probable influence on subsequent sedimentation, tectonics and mineralisation. In Geology in the real world–the Kingsley Dunham volume (eds Nesbitt, R. W. and Nichol, J.), pp. 117–27. Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.Google Scholar
Fitton, J. G., Thirlwall, M. F. & Hughes, D. J. 1982. Volcanism in the Caledonian orogenic belt of Britain. In Andesites (ed. Thorpe, R. S.), pp. 611–36. London: Wiley.Google Scholar
Fortey, N. J. 1989. Low grade metamorphism in the Lower Ordovician Skiddaw Group of the Lake District, England. Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society 47, 325–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fortey, N. J. & Cooper, D. C. 1986. Tourmalinisation in the Skiddaw Group around Crummock Water, English Lake District. Mineralogical Magazine 50, 17–26.Google Scholar
Fortey, N. J. & Nancarrow, P. H. A. 1990. Chromian minerals in microdiorite from the English Lake District. Journal of the Russell Society 3, 15–22.Google Scholar
Fortey, R. A., Beckly, A. J. & Rushton, A. W. A. 1990. International correlation of the base of the Llanvirn Series, Ordovician System. Newsletters on Stratigraphy 22, 119–42.Google Scholar
Fortey, R. A., Owens, R. M. & Rushton, A. W. A. 1989. The palaeogeographic position of the Lake District in the early Ordovician. Geological Magazine 126, 9–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Helm, D. G. 1970. Stratigraphy and structure in the Black Combe Inlier, English Lake District. Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society 38, 105–48.Google Scholar
Hughes, R. A., Cooper, A. H. & Stone, P. 1993. Structural evolution of the Skiddaw Group (English Lake District) on the northern margin of Eastern Avalonia. Geological Magazine 130, 621–9.Google Scholar
Hunter, R. H. & Bowden, N. 1990. The Carrock Fell Igneous Complex. In Geology of the Lake District (ed. Moseley, F.), pp. 57–67. Geologists' Association.Google Scholar
Ingham, J. K., Mcnamara, K. J. & Rickards, R. B. 1978. The Upper Ordovician and Silurian rocks. In The Geology of the Lake District (ed. Moseley, F.), pp. 121–45. Yorkshire Geological Society, Occasional Publication no. 3.Google Scholar
Jeans, P. F. 1972. The junction between the Skiddaw Slates and Borrowdale Volcanics in Newlands Beck, Cumberland. Geological Magazine 109, 25–8.Google Scholar
Johnson, E. W. 1992. Geology of Stoupdale area Black Combe, S.W. Cumbria. British Geological Survey Technical Report WA/92/71.Google Scholar
Johnson, G. A. L. 1961. Skiddaw slates proved in the Teesdale inlier. Nature (London) 90, 996–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, M. R. W., Sanderson, D. J. & Soper, N. J. 1979. Deformation in the Caledonides of England, Ireland and Scotland. In The Caledonides of the British Isles-reviewed (eds Harris, A. L., Holland, C. H. and Leake, B. E.), pp. 165–86. Geological Society of London, Special Publication no. 8.Google Scholar
Kanaris-Sotiriou, R., Millward, D. & Rundle, C. C. 1991. The Great Whinscale Dacite – an enigmatic lava flow from the Borrowdale Volcanic Group in the English Lake District. Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society 48, 393–408.Google Scholar
Kneller, B. C. 1990. The Ludlow rocks of Sheet 38 (Ambleside). British Geological Survey Technical Report WA/90/62.Google Scholar
Kneller, B. C. 1991. A foreland basin on the southern margin of Iapetus. Journal of the Geological Society, London 148, 207–10.Google Scholar
Kneller, B. C. & Bell, A. M. 1993. An Acadian mountain front in the English Lake District: the Westmorland Monocline. Geological Magazine 130, 203–13.Google Scholar
Kokelaar, B. P. 1988. Tectonic controls of Ordovician arc and marginal volcanism in Wales. Journal of the Geological Society, London 145, 759–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kokelaar, B. P., Howells, M. F., Bevins, R. E., Roach, R. E. & Dunkley, P. N. 1984. The Ordovician marginal basin of Wales. In Marginal basin geology, volcanic and associated sedimentary and tectonic processes in modern and ancient marginal basins (eds Kokelaar, B. P. and Howells, M. F.), pp. 245–69. Geological Society of London, Special Publication no. 16.Google Scholar
Lawrence, D. J. D., Webb, B. C., Young, B. & White, D. E. 1986. The geology of the late Ordovician and Silurian rocks (Windermere Group) in the area around Kentmere and Crook. Report of the British Geological Survey, vol. 18, no. 5.Google Scholar
Lee, M. K. 1986. A new gravity survey of the Lake District and three-dimensional model of the granite batholith. Journal of the Geological Society, London 143, 425–35.Google Scholar
Lee, M. K. 1989. Upper crustal structure of the Lake District from modelling and image processing of potential field data. British Geological Survey Technical Report WK/89/1.Google Scholar
Lee, M. K., Pharaoh, T. C. & Soper, N. J. 1990. Structural trends in central Britain from images of gravity and aeromagnetic fields. Journal of the Geological Society, London 147, 241–58.Google Scholar
Maletz, J., Rushton, A. W. A. & Lindholm, K. 1991. A new Ordovician didymograptid, and its bearing on the correlation of the Skiddaw Group of England with the Teyen Shale of Scandinavia. Geological Magazine 128, 335–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macdonald, R., Millward, D., Beddoe-Stephens, B. & Laybourn-Parry, J. 1988. The role of tholeiitic magmatism in the English Lake District: evidence from dykes in Eskdale. Mineralogical Magazine 52, 459–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macdonald, R., Thorpe, R. S., Gaskarth, J. W. & Grindrod, A. R. 1985. Multisource origin of lampro-phyres of Northern England. Mineralogical Magazine 49, 485–94.Google Scholar
McKerrow, W. S., Dewey, J. F. & Scotese, C. R. 1991. The Ordovician and Silurian development of the lapetus Ocean. Special Papers in Palaeontology 44, 165–78.Google Scholar
McKerrow, W. S. & Soper, N. J. 1989. The lapetus suture in the British Isles. Geological Magazine 126, 1–8.Google Scholar
Millward, D. & Lawrence, D. J. D. 1985. The Stockdale (Yarlside) Rhyolite-a rheomorphic ignimbrite? Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society 45, 299–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millward, D. & Molyneux, S. G. 1992. Field and biostratigraphic evidence for an unconformity at the base of the Eycott Volcanic Group in the English Lake District. Geological Magazine 129, 77–92.Google Scholar
Millward, D., Moseley, F. & Soper, N. J. 1978. The Eycott and Borrowdale Volcanic Rocks. In The Geology of the Lake District (ed. Moseley, F.), pp. 99–120. Yorkshire Geological Society, Occasional Publication no. 3.Google Scholar
Molyneux, S. G. 1988. Micropalaeontological evidence for the age of the Borrowdale Volcanic Group. Geological Magazine 125, 541–2.Google Scholar
Molyneux, S. G. & Rushton, A. W. A. 1988. The age of the Watch Hill Grits (Ordovician), English Lake District: structural and palaeogeographical implications. Transactions of the Royal Society Edinburgh: Earth Sciences 79, 43–69.Google Scholar
Moseley, F. 1960. The succession and structure of the Borrowdale Volcanic Series, south-east of Ullswater. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 116, 55–84.Google Scholar
Moseley, F. 1964. The succession and structure of the Borrowdale Volcanic rocks, north-west of Ullswater. Liverpool and Manchester GeologicalJournal 4, 127–42.Google Scholar
Moseley, F. 1972. A tectonic history of North-West England. Journal of the Geological Society, London 128, 561–98.Google Scholar
Moseley, F. (ed.) 1978. The Geology of the Lake District. Yorkshire Geological Society Occasional Publication No. 3.Google Scholar
Moseley, F. & Millward, D. 1982. Ordovician volcanicity in the English Lake District. In Igneous rocks of the British Isles (ed. Sutherland, D.S.), pp. 93–111. London: Wiley.Google Scholar
Nutt, M. J. C. 1979. The Haweswater Complex. In The Caledonides of the British Isles – reviewed (eds Harris, A. L., Holland, C.H. & Leake, B.E.), pp. 727–33. Special Publication of the Geological Society, London no. 8.Google Scholar
O'Brien, C., Plant, J. A., Simpson, P. R. & Tarney, J. 1985. The geochemistry, metasomatism and pedogenesis of the granites of the English Lake District. Journal of the Geological Society, London 142, 1139–57.Google Scholar
Petterson, M. G., Beddoe-Stephens, B., Millward, D. & Johnson, E. W. 1992. A pre-caldera plateau-andesite field in the Borrowdale Volcanic Group of the English Lake District. Journal of the Geological Society, London 149, 889–906.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pharaoh, T. C., Merriman, R. J., Evans, J. A., Brewer, T. S., Webb, P. C. & Smith, N. J. P. 1991. Early Palaeozoic arc-related volcanism in the concealed Caledonides of Southern Britain. Annales de la Société Géologique de Belgique 114, 63–91.Google Scholar
Rickards, R. B. 1978. In The Geology of the Lake District. (ed. Moseley, F.), pp. 130–45. Yorkshire Geological Society, Occasional Publication No. 3.Google Scholar
Romano, M. & Spears, D. A. 1991. Bentonites from the Horton Formation (Upper Silurian) of Ribblesdale, Yorkshire. Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society 48, 277–85.Google Scholar
Rose, W. C. C. & Dunham, K. D. 1977. Geology and hematite deposits of South Cumbria. Economic Memoir of the Geological Survey of Great Britain (England & Wales), Sheet 58, part 48.Google Scholar
Rundle, C. C. 1979. Ordovician intrusions in the English Lake District. Journal of the Geological Society, London 136, 29–38.Google Scholar
Rundle, C. C. 1981. The significance of isotopie dates from the English Lake District for the Ordovician-Silurian time-scale. Journal of the Geological Society, London 138, 569–72.Google Scholar
Rundle, C. C. 1992. Review and assessment of isotopie ages from the English Lake District. British Geological Survey Technical Report WA/92/38, 27 pp.Google Scholar
Rushton, A. W. A. 1985. A Lancefieldian graptolite from the Lake District. Geological Magazine 111, 329–33.Google Scholar
Rushton, A. W. A. 1988. Tremadoc trilobites from the Skiddaw Group in the English Lake District. Palaeontology 31, 677–98.Google Scholar
Rushton, A. W. A. & Molyneux, S. G. 1989. The biostratigraphic age of the Ordovician Skiddaw Group in the Black Combe inlier, English Lake District. Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society 47, 267–76.Google Scholar
Scott, R. W. & Kneller, B. C. 1990. A report on the Ashgill and Llandovery age rocks of Sheet 38 (Ambleside). British Geological Survey Technical Report WA/90/63.Google Scholar
Shaw, R. W. L. 1971. The faunal stratigraphy of the Kirkby Moor Flags of the type area near Kendal, Westmorland. Geological Journal 7, 359–80.Google Scholar
Simpson, A. 1967. The stratigraphy and tectonics of the Skiddaw Slates and the relationship of the overlying Borrowdale Volcanic Series in part of the Lake District. Geological Journal 5, 391–418.Google Scholar
Soper, N. J., England, R. W., Snyder, D. B. & Ryan, P. D. 1992 a. The lapetus suture zone in England, Scotland and eastern Ireland: a reconciliation of geological and deep seismic data. Journal of the Geological Society, London 149, 697–700.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soper, N. J. & Kneller, B. C. 1990. Cleaved microgranite dykes of the Shap swarm in the Silurian of NW England. Geological Journal 25, 161–70.Google Scholar
Soper, N. J. & Moseley, F. 1978. Structure. In The Geology of the Lake District (ed. Moseley, F.), pp. 45–67. Yorkshire Geological Society, Occasional Publication no. 3.Google Scholar
Soper, N. J., Strachan, R. A., Holdsworth, R. E., Gayer, R. A. & Greiling, R. O. 1992 b. Sinistral transpression and the Silurian closure of lapetus. Journal of the Geological Society, London 149, 871–80.Google Scholar
Soper, N. J., Webb, B. C. & Woodcock, N. H. 1987. Late Caledonian (Acadian) transpression in north-west England: timing, geometry and geotectonic significance. Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society 42, 297–305.Google Scholar
Soper, N. J. & Woodcock, N. H. 1990. Silurian collision and sediment dispersal patterns in southern Britain. Geological Magazine 111, 527–42.Google Scholar
Thirlwall, M. F. & Fitton, J. G. 1983. Sm–Nd garnet age for the Ordovician Borrowdale Volcanic Group, English Lake District. Journal of the Geological Society, London 140, 511–18.Google Scholar
Wadge, A. J. 1978 a. Devonian. In The Geology of the Lake District (ed. Moseley, F.), pp. 164–7. Yorkshire Geological Society, Occasional Publication no. 3.Google Scholar
Wadge, A. J. 1978 b. Classification and stratigraphical relationships of the Lower Ordovician rocks. In The Geology of the Lake District (ed. Moseley, F.), pp. 68–78. Yorkshire Geological Society, Occasional Publication no. 3.Google Scholar
Webb, B. C. 1990. The Buttermere Formation (Skiddaw Group) in the Robinson area. In Geology of the Lake District (ed. Moseley, F.), pp. 74–82. Geologists' Association.Google Scholar
Webb, B. C. & Cooper, A. H. 1988. Slump folds and gravity slide structures in a Lower Palaeozoic marginal basin sequence (the Skiddaw Group), NW England. Journal of Structural Geology 10, 463–72.Google Scholar
Webb, B. C. & Lawrence, D. J. D. 1986. Conical fold terminations in the Bannisdale Slates of the English Lake District. Journal of Structural Geology 8, 79–86.Google Scholar
Wilson, A. A. & Cornwell, J. D. 1982. The Institute of Geological Sciences borehole at Beckermonds Scar, North Yorkshire. Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society 44, 59–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, B., Ansari, S. M. & Firman, R. J. 1988. Field relationships, mineralogy and chemistry of the greisens and related rocks associated with the Eskdale Granite, Cumbria. Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society 47, 109–23.Google Scholar