The Braefoot Outer Sill, Fife - Part 1

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Abstract
I. Introduction. The Braefoot Outer Sill is the higher of the two thick sills intrusive in the Lower Oil Shale Group, whose horse-shoe-shaped outcrops can be traced more or less continuously from Dalgety Bay to Aberdour. Early references to the sill are to be found in Hay Cunningham’s Geology of the Lothians (1838, p. 127),1 and in Charles Maclaren’s Geology of Fife and the Lothians (1839, p. 109). Both writers classified the rock of the sill as ‶greenstone.″ In the Geological Survey Memoir on Central and Western Fife and Kinross (Geikie, Sir Arch., 1900, p. 83) the sill is described as a crystalline dolerite, and its thickness is estimated as at least 450 feet. Dr F. Walker (1923, pp. 366 and 373) regarded the rock as a uniform analcite-dolerite. He commented on its decomposed character at Hallcraig. In the most recent contribution to the study of the sill Day and Stenhouse (1930) noted the occurrence of a picritic phase near the base between high- and low-water mark at Braefoot Bay, and the presence, near the top of the sill at Braefoot Point, of a zone richly charged with xenoliths of quartzite and hornfelsed fine-grained sediments. More detailed investigation has shown that the sill exhibits extraordinary variability in character, both in a vertical direction and when followed along the strike. The present communication is confined to a description of its development between Dalgety Bay and Braefoot Bay, including the promontory of Braefoot Point and that part which lies within the limits

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