The Lower Carboniferous Rocks in the North of England: A Review

Introduction This work is an attempt to summarize and discuss some of the problems that have arisen in the last quarter-century, in relation to their geological and historical background. A general regional study is not given, since it is covered in the series on British Regional Geology produced by the Geological Survey (Eastwood, 1946; Wray, 1948); also some aspects are omitted, especially systematic and descriptive palaeontology, post-Carboniferous tectonics, mineralization and igneous intrusions. The title of the review needs a little explanation. ‘The North of England’ may be limited according to the present outcrops or, more ideally, by cognate sedimentary history and geological structure. In the latter sense there is no natural southern boundary till we come to the Midland Barrier and St. Georges Land; this, however, would give an area of impossible size and complexity, and here the north is taken to mean north of the Lancashire and Yorkshire coalfields, containing parts of those counties, together with Cumberland, Westmorland, Durham and Northumberland. There is in the literature a plethora of geographical terms—Northern, Central, North-Western, Pennine, Mid-Pennine, North-Pennine Province or Region; without explanatory qualifications they may well confound the reader and have been used sparingly. This limitation of the geographical field leaves out little that is really essential to an understanding of northern problems, with one exception—the limestone massif of Derbyshire and North Staffordshire, which is a subject for a review in itself. With a short preliminary description certain evidence has been drawn from this area in the sections ...