The quaternary deposits of central Leicestershire

Abstract
A programme of mapping and augering has shown the glacial drifts of central Leicestershire to consist of a basal sand and gravel overlain by a complex succession of tills and interbedded waterlaid sediments. The tills display a transition from materials of predominantly north-western derivation to those of north-eastern derivation. Arguments are adduced by which the succession is correlated with that described by Shotton in Warwickshire, and it is concluded that the vast majority of the drifts belong to the Saalian glaciation. A widespread but discontinuous horizon of sand and gravel is believed to denote a temporary melt phase in the middle of the glaciation, while more limited beds of stoneless silt and clay betoken still-water sedimentation which, south of Leicester, is regarded as the local equivalent of the lacustrine Wolston clay of Warwickshire. Although the bedrock surface over most of central Leicestershire has a form consistent with an origin by normal stream erosion, there remain a number of areas where it is difficult to sustain such an interpretation. At Narborough excavations and augering have revealed virtually the full drift succession cut by a series of normal faults traceable over a distance of at least a mile. Near these faults there is evidence of an enclosed depression scored into bedrock and filled with water-laid drift. Although subsequent to the deposition of the drift, the faults have no surface expression at the present time, the structures being truncated by an early post-glacial erosion surface. Later phases in the post-glacial evolution of the Soar and Wreak valleys are associated with a suite of river terraces which, from their included fauna, span the period of the Eemian interglacial and the Weichselian glaciation.

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