The Geological Structure of the Kings-Clere Pericline. The Eocene Succession between Kingsclere and Ecchinswell

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The Vale of Kingsclere is in north Hampshire, about five miles south of Newbury, and just beyond the southern border of Berkshire. Geologically it is a periclinal crest on the anticline that forms the southern limit of the London Basin. It may be considered as the “type-specimen” of a “valley of elevation”, for in 1826 Buckland used it in illustration of the features to which he gave that name; and it, alone of his examples, was mentioned in the somewhat diffuse title of his memoir. There could hardly be a more suitable type selected to represent a pericline, whether considered from a tectonic or geomorphological standpoint. The floor of the Vale, scoured out by the headwaters of northward flowing streams, is composed for the most part of the Upper Greensand, which occurs as an inlier 4¾ miles long and 1 mile from north to south at its greatest breadth. The southern boundary of the Vale is a steep escarpment of the Chalk, partly breached near the south-west end, and deeply embayed by picturesque coombes at two other points. From the crest of this escarpment, which attains a height of over 850 feet in the west and is only 100 feet lower in the east, a rolling downland is seen sweeping southwards to Winchester and beyond; while to the north the heather-clad commons of the western end of the London Basin form the foreground to a view that comprises Reading, Oxford, the White Horse Downs and glimpses of the Cotswold Hills.