Geology of London, UK

Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association 123 (2012) 22–45 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association jo urnal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pgeola Review paper Geology of London, UK a, b,c d e c Katherine R. Royse *, Mike de Freitas , William G. Burgess , John Cosgrove , Richard C. Ghail , f g h i j k Phil Gibbard , Chris King , Ursula Lawrence , Rory N. Mortimore , Hugh Owen , Jackie Skipper a British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottingham NG12 5GG, UK b First Steps Ltd, Unit 17 Hurlingham Studios, London SW6 3PA, UK c Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK d Department of Earth Sciences, University College London, WC1E 6BT, UK e Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK f Cambridge Quaternary, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, CB2 3EN, UK g 16A Park Road, Bridport, Dorset, UK h Crossrail Ltd. 25 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5LQ, UK i University of Brighton & ChalkRock Ltd, 32 Prince Edwards Road, Lewes BN7 1BE, UK j Department of Palaeontology, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK k Geotechnical Consulting Group (GCG), 52A Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BE, UK A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T Article history: The population of London is around 7 million. The infrastructure to support this makes London one of the Received 25 February 2011 most intensively investigated areas of upper crust. However construction work in London continues to Received in revised form 5 July 2011 reveal the presence of unexpected ground conditions. These have been discovered in isolation and often Accepted 8 July 2011 recorded with no further work to explain them. There is a scientific, industrial and commercial need to Available online 10 August 2011 refine the geological framework for London and its surrounding area. This paper reviews the geological setting of London as it is understood at present, and outlines the issues that current research is Keywords: attempting to resolve. London Basin Forum ß 2011 Natural Environment Research Council. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Geologists’ Pre-Gault and Gault sediments Chalk Association. Open access under CC BY license. Paleogene Lambeth Group and Thanet Sand Formation Eocene Thames group Quaternary clay-with-flints and river deposits Geological structures Ground engineering impacts Contents 1. Introduction . 23 2. Pre-Gault and Gault sedimentary formations. 27 3. The Chalk . 28 4. Lower Paleogene . 29 5. The Thames Group. 30 6. Quaternary . 31 6.1. Clay-with-flints . 32 6.2. River deposits . 32 7. Geological structures in London . 35 8. The impact of geology on ground engineering in London . 36 9. Hydrogeology . 39 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (K.R. Royse). 0016-7878 ß 2011 Natural Environment Research Council. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Geologists’ Association. Open access under CC BY license. doi:10.1016/j.pgeola.2011.07.005 K.R. Royse et al. / Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association 123 (2012) 22–45 23 10. The use of 2D and 3D modelling techniques in understanding the geology of the London Basin . 40 11. Summary and conclusions. 42 Acknowledgements . 43 References . 43 1. Introduction presented by the British Geological Survey as a simple unfaulted downwarp on undifferentiated basement (Sherlock, 1947). This paper reviews the geological framework for London and its Boreholes drilled in the London Basin for oil, coal and gas have surrounding area. It highlights the complex nature of London’s proved the extent of a Palaeozoic basement, the London Platform, geology and the possible implications for current and future of folded Silurian and foreland Devonian rocks at depths of development. Within this review article the London Basin’s 300 m in central London (Sumbler, 1996). Upon these Palaeozoic boundaries are defined by the limit of the Chalk outcrop (Sumbler, rocks are found remnants of strata of Jurassic age, which are 1996). The Basin is described by Sumbler (1996), as a broad, gentle themselves covered unconformably by strata of Early Cretaceous synclinal fold (Fig. 1); although its seaward extension is not shown, age (Table 1). The Gault is the earliest preserved formation to the structure continues out into the North Sea (King, 2006). The cover the whole area. The London Platform (Fig. 2) is considered to term ‘London Basin’ was first used on the maps of Smith (1815) and extend to the Worcestershire Basin in the west, to the East Greenough (1820) to describe the sediments that make up the Midlands Shelf in the north, to the southern North Sea graben in geology of London (Sheppard, 1917). The outcrop limits of the the east, and to the Weald Basin in the south (Sumbler, 1996). This Chalk were fundamental in defining the original limits of this Platform forms the western part of the London-Brabant massif ‘‘basin’’. However, to understand London’s geology, it is necessary (Lee et al., 1993). The southern boundary of the Platform and its to go beyond these present-day geographical limits. It is really only Western boundary are fault controlled. The faulted southern in the later stages of geological history that the idea of a London- boundary has been referred to as the ‘‘Variscan Front’’, a tectonic centred geology can be considered helpful. line extending from the Bristol Channel to cross southern England The British Geological Survey commenced detailed geological to the Strait of Dover. mapping of the London Basin in 1861 and soon realised that the The late Variscan pattern of faulting in the Platform had a correlation of strata across and beneath London was not always as profound effect on the subsequent location and development of straightforward as it at first appeared (Whitaker, 1872). For Mesozoic and Cenozoic tectonic structures, because tectonic example, the substantial and isolated Chalk outcrop at Windsor in stresses associated with the rotation of Africa and the opening the west occurs 5 km south-east of the main Chalk outcrop near of the Atlantic reactivated late Variscan block-faulting. At the Maidenhead. There are smaller but largely unexplained Chalk Jurassic – Cretaceous boundary, these late Variscan faults which structures mapped in the east by Wooldridge (1923, 1926) and had produced a ‘‘proto-Wealden Basin’’ at the end of the Palaeozoic Wooldridge and Linton (1939). However in 1947 the Basin was still were partly reactivated to form the current Weald Basin. The N Hitchin A Dunstable Colchester Bishop’s Luton Stortford Clacton-on St Albans Chelmford -Sea Syncline the London Basin Axial trace of High Wycombe Watford LONDON Southend-on-Sea Westminster Grain Chertsey Rochester Croydon Aldershot Guildford B 0 50 km Chalk Group QUATERNAR Y Line of cross-section Wealden and Lower Greensand Groups, Gault and Upper Greensand Formations PALEOGENE and NEOGENE CRETACEOUS Fig. 1. Geological sketch map of the London Basin. Based on Sumbler (1996, Fig. 1). 24 K.R. Royse et al. / Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association 123 (2012) 22–45 Table 1 Summary of the geological strata of the London Basin from Ellison et al., 2004 with Chalk Group thickness updated from Royse et al. (2010). Period Group Formation Thickness (m) Paleogene Bagshot Formation: sand, fine-grained with thin clay beds 10–25 Thames London Clay Formation: clay, silty; fine sand clay at base. 90–130 Claygate member: interbedded sand and clay at top Harwich Formation: sand, clayey fine grained sand and 0–10 pebble beds Lambeth Reading, Woolwich And Upnor Formations: clay mottled 10–20 with fine-grained sand, laminated clay, flint pebble beds and shelly clay Thanet Sand Formation: sand, fine-grained 0–30 Cretaceous Chalk Seaford and Newhaven Chalk Formations Undivided: chalk Up to 70 soft, white with flint courses Lewes Nodular Chalk Formation: chalk, white with hard, 25–46 nodular beds New Pit Chalk Formation: chalk white to grey with few flints 30–50 Holywell Nodular Chalk Formation: chalk white to grey, shelly, 11–18 hard and nodular Zig Zag Chalk Formation and West Melbury Chalk Formation: 40–80 chalk, pale grey with thin marls; glaconitic at the base Upper Greensand Formation: sand fine-grained, glauconitic Up to 17 Gault Formation: clay, silty 50–70 Lower Folkestone Formation: sandstone, fine to medium-grained 60 Concealed strata Greensand Sandgate, Hythe and Atherfield Clay Formations: sandstone 34 and mudstone Wealden Weald Clay Formation: mudstone Up to 150 Hastings Beds: sandstone and mudstone Jurassic Limestone and mudstone 0–c. 750 Silurian and Devonian Sandstone and siltstone products of this erosion were redeposited in the Weald and The geological structure of the Cretaceous and Paleogene strata Hampshire Basins during the Early Cretaceous, initially as the which overlie this basement has in the past been considered freshwater Wealden Group and subsequently as the marine Lower ‘relatively simple’ (Ellison et al., 2004); for example, despite the Greensand. The Lower Greensand is present widely below the accumulated indirect evidence for brittle structures in the basin, Gault in borings in the London Platform, but is essentially of Late only two faults are shown on the current geological maps for the Aptian and Early Albian age. Later, the Gault sea covered the region: the Wimbledon-Streatham fault and the Greenwich fault Platform, depositing deeper water clays. (Fig. 3). There is, however, a growing body of direct evidence, particularly from recent deeper engineering projects, such as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, Thames Water Ring Main (Newman, 2009), Crossrail and the Docklands Light Railway, which demon- Major fault (inferred) North Gradational boundary Sea strate that there is much more faulting in London and that the structure of London is more complex (Royse, 2010). One aspect of 040km Basin the tectonic history that is of overriding significance to the geological development of the London Basin, and consequently to East the application of London’s geology to engineering and water Midlands supply, is the location of a broad tectonic boundary running Shelf approximately east to west beneath the London Basin (Fig.

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