Newsletter No.11 January 2012

Keep in touch with GeoSuffolk Times. Welcome to issue number 11 of our newsletter - for those Have you visited Ipswich Cornhill? who value ’s geodiversity. Caroline On market days the Cornhill is a riot of colour and noise from the stalls and bustling shoppers. Markham 13.01.12 www.geosuffolk.co.uk This might also be a good time to visit the exhibition galleries in the Town Hall, noticing the A Measure of Suffolk What do you use as a scale in your scientific splendid red granite columns inside the entrance photographs? Do you always have a centimetre hall. Outside, the Town Hall shows the remains scale or tape measure with you? A quick glance of deserts and of sea-beds in its building stones. at some of my photographs shows a good The columns are of Mansfield Stone, a red variety of ‘scales’! A geological hammer at sandstone originally deposited about 220 million Tattingstone Hall crag pit, a spade at a ‘dig’ at years ago (Triassic age) when the area of Britain Battisford stone pit, a trowel at Chillesford was largely desert. There is some flaking of the Church pit. One Chillesford face was scaled by upper parts, perhaps due to wash-off from an orangeade bottle! People in a photograph limestone but it may happen if the long axis of (e.g. Covehithe cliff) are great but yesterday’s the column is nearly parallel to the rock’s original fashions may vie for interest with the rock; bedding. The building’s orange-brown limestone maybe just a hand will do e.g. next to a is Bath Stone, about 170-175 million years old whalebone at Holton gravel pit. Cockle shells (Jurassic age), whilst just above pavement level have been used at Wangford gravel pit and a the white limestone is Portland Stone (about 145 pen at Aldeburgh Brickworks. Coins can be million years old). good for close-ups but that 10p piece at To feel even closer to the Jurassic sea, cross Aldeburgh pit is the original size (today’s 10p the Cornhill to the side of the Nat West Bank – pieces are smaller). What will you be passing to here the fossil oyster shells in the Portland the future to enjoy or puzzle about in your Stone are more resistant to weathering and

Suffolk photographs? Bob Markham (RM) stand proud of the surface. For something quite different go into the Tower

GeoSuffolk Notes Ramparts shopping centre. Most of the floor is GeoSuffolk has helped with several events light-coloured Botticino marble from Italy, but more conspicuous is green ‘Verde Issorie’ during 2011 (see especially GST no.10). There is always some preparation involved and RM serpentinite (‘serpent-like’) rock from the Val d’ Aosta in the Italian Alps. It is composed of iron- has recorded much this in his GeoSuffolk Notes series. Four from last year have been put onto rich minerals and has been fragmented by earth- www.geosuffolk.co.uk : movements. It weathers rapidly outside and is 15. Christchurch Park thus used mainly in interiors. RM

16. St. Peter’s Church, Ipswich Essex Gem and Mineral Show 17. Echinoids This is well worth a visit – at North Romford 24. Coprolite Street CM Community Centre, Collier Row, on February

Frederick Harmer 18th – see www.erms.org for details Frederick Harmer is well known to geologists for his work on the Crag deposits and their fossils. GeoScenic , the British Geological

Survey’s photographic archive, contains A Celebration of Suffolk Geology is photographs from the Frederick William Harmer on course for publication at collection - http://geoscenic.bgs.ac.uk . Most GeoSuffolk’s 10th AGM on May have minimal information, which may easily be 12th 2012. Thank you to all added to; here are two to start with: contributors, both academic and P680271 is Bentley, Suffolk, showing Percy financial and especially to editor Dr Boswell sieving Red Crag. Roger Dixon. P680273 is Red Crag at Little Oakley, Essex and shows Harmer’s car. RM

Promoting Suffolk’s Earth Heritage 1 January 2012

News : Geodiversity Providers and Owners Coprolite Street The Festival of Geology on November 5th 2011 Science Day at Ipswich Museum 10.03.12 was hosted by the Geologists’ Association at The Museum will be hosting a ‘Dinosaur Star University College London. GeoSuffolk’s stand Show’ - a giant blow-up planetarium ‘taking a Coprolite Street took a look at an almost journey back to the time of the dinosaurs’. forgotten industry of Victorian Suffolk. Coprolite See www.cimuseums.org.uk/whats-on.html for stones, discovered at the base of the Red Crag more information. GeoSuffolk will also be there, by John Stevens Henslow whilst on holiday at looking at space rocks and with a special look at Felixstowe in 1843, were found to be rich in the Asteroid Belt with its many and varied worlds phosphate and became the basis of the local and their often exotic names. RM fertiliser industry. Our stand featured old photographs e.g. of Edward Packard’s fertiliser Knettishall Heath CGS factory in Ipswich; a reproduction of the Knettishall Heath has been called the best ‘Coprolite Window’ in Waldringfield Church example of periglacial patterned ground in (which was restored using money from the . The alternating chalky and sandy coprolite quarrying industry in the parish); a ‘pick stripes were produced by cryoturbation during your own’ coprolite pile from a contemporary the last cold phase about 15,000 years ago. Red Crag pit. Of course we still have the real Today they are picked out by contrasting Coprolite Street in Ipswich where the factory vegetation, forming linear patterns over large stood and now the address of University areas of the Country Park which is at present Campus Suffolk. For more information see leased and managed by Suffolk County Council. GeoSuffolk Notes no.24 www.geosuffolk.co.uk . The is looking to buy CM Knettishall Heath and has received a substantial Claude Read HLF grant towards the costs, but more money is Claude Read, farmer of Chillesford, died in needed...... see www.suffolkwildlifetrust.org CM October 2011. He was a good friend to geologists (as are so many Suffolk farmers), he County Geosites (CGS) and his family giving permission to visit their During 2011 GeoSuffolk undertook Condition classical pit (an SSSI) in the Chillesford Beds. I Monitoring visits to 7 of the 13 Public CGS first met him in the late 1950s and have many designated at the start of the year. Wantisden happy memories of him with his tractor! RM Church, Sutton Church and Chillesford Church (landowner Church of England); and Great Pit (SWT); Westleton Heath Dunwich: Learning for the Future from our Past Pit (RSPB); Butley Forest Pit (Forestry An excellent seminar hosted by Dunwich Commission) all scored GOOD on the Condition Museum on 21.10.11, this brought together Monitoring Form. This information has been Dunwich residents with academic geographers given to Suffolk County Council for inclusion of and local environmental specialists. The the Defra Single Data List 160-00 for Suffolk presentations are on the Dunwich Museum web Local Sites and also to Natural England via the site www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk/library/list.php . Geology Trust database. Details of these sites Look out particularly for: are in Earth Heritage Suffolk . Suffolk is lucky to • Cliff retreat: rates and mechanisms by Dr have such a large number of important geosites Sue Brooks of Birkbeck University of London with public access and landowners who maintain which has a useful analysis of erosion of the them so well. CM cliffs at Covehithe. • NNR by Alan Miller of SWT for spectacular photos of the marshes inundated by sea water. • Dunwich: The Geology of Suffolk’s Lost City by Caroline Markham of GeoSuffolk which has an unusual photo of Norwich Crag fossil molluscs from an offshore borehole, plus several of the Norwich Crag gravels (Westleton Beds). • Managing Coastal Processes and Change by Gary Watson of the Environment Agency, Coralline Crag blocks in the tower of the Church for graphs of erosion/accretion trends along of St. John The Baptist, Wantisden the Suffolk coast. CM

Promoting Suffolk’s Earth Heritage 2