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Edingley geologyEdingley lies on the border between older Lower Triassic (Sherwood) sandstones to the west (Farnsfield direction) and younger and slightly harder Middle Triassic (Mercia) mudstones to the east. The exact boundary is between Edingley and Farnsfield.
The villages of Wellow, Eakring, Bilsthorpe, Kirklington and Oxton all lie on the same geological boundary. A similar Sherwood/Mercia boundary underlies the east of Nottingham near Mapperley, St Anne's and Sneinton.
The Sherwood sandstones are continuous with the Nottingham Castle sandstone on which most of the city of Nottingham stands. Click here for more. Much of the water used to irrigate the surrounding vegetable farms is pumped from the Sherwood sandstone, an important local aquifer.
Edingley itself lies on a layer of inter-bedded reddish brown sandstone, siltstone and mudstone, called locally the Sneinton formation. Its old name was "The Keuper Waterstones" because the rock is covered by a white shiny mica which gives a watery sheen.
Edingley hill is formed from the same Sneinton formation. As we move east towards Southwell, we pass Halam village, the valley overlain with alluvium, and the road rises again along the boundary of Norwood park golf course, drivers cross the scarp slope of two more Mercia mudstone layers. The first (and older) is a layer of pink red mudstone, the Radcliffe formation, followed after a few hundred yeards by the Gunthorpe formation of red brown mudstone with indurated beds of green dolomitic siltstone.
Sadly the Sneinton formation is not revealed in the cutting of Edingley hill. Nor are the Radcliffe or Gunthorpe formations revealed in the cutting of Halam hill. However the layers of of the Sneinton formation can be seen by drivers on the A60 in the cutting at Redhill north of Nottingham .
The Gunthorpe formation is a major feature of East Nottingham and Southwell geology, and is extensively mined for brick clay. Currently clay from the Gunthorpe formation is being dug for bricks at Dorket Head in Arnold. Canoeists down the Trent can see fine sections at Stoke Lock and at Gunthorpe. Click here.
DriftThe flat area of Edingley moor, the site of old Edingley mill, is covered by alluvial sand, gravel and clay which fills the ancient shallow valley of Edingley beck. Downstream the same material fills the Greta valley as it flows past Southwell to the Trent. Dinosaurs?Did dinosaurs once roam round Edingley? I'd love to think so, and it was once believed that footprints had been identified in the same local rock layer at Mapperley in Nottingham.
In 1912 a cutting at the north end of Cyprus Road (Grid reference SK 575424) had revealed seven dinosaur footprints (Swinnerton 1912, Sarjeant 1967 and 1970) in the Sneinton formation. Such Middle Triassic footprints would have been among the earliest dinosaur footprints in Europe, but sadly it was not to be.
Recent research suggests the footprints were genuine, but of two different animals, Chirotherium and Rhynchosauroides, which were not dinosaurs (King and Benson 1996).
However dinosaur footprints have been found elsewhere in Britain, notably at Bendrick Rock near Barry in South Wales and at Aust, near the Severn bridge. These have all been within the late Triassic Mercia mudstones, more or less the same layers as the Gunthorpe formation. So it is reasonable to suppose that dinosaurs once roamed near Nottingham. Their footprints were either not preserved or have not yet been discovered.
Jim Thornton 12 Dec 2005
ReferencesKing MJ, Benton MJ (1996) Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleaoecology; 122: 213-25. Sarjeant WAS (1967) Fossil footprints from the Middle Triassic of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Mercian Geology; 2: 327-341. Sarjeant WAS (1970) Fossil footprints from the Middle Triassic of Nottingham and the Middle Jurassic of Yorkshire. Mercian Geology; 3: 269-282. Swinnerton HH (1912) The palmistry of the rocks. Rep Trans Notts Nat Soc; 60: 65-68.
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