Chalk exposures in East Yorkshire

The Chalk of the Yorkshire Wolds is about 400 m thick. To study it geologists have to visit several quarries to piece together the stratigraphy. There is also some variation in the thickness of the strata over the region, but these have not been fully investigated. There is a slight stratigraphic gap in the exposures in the middle and the uppermost parts have to be studies on the coast.

The Hull Geological Society and the East Yorkshire RIGS Group are anxious to see the conservation of as much of the sequence as possible for future research and education. Sites are being lost at an alarming rate.

The first local collecting was done by J R Mortimer of Driffield, who's collection was bought by Hull Museums, but mostly destroyed by a bomb in 1944. He "collected in the days wen there was a pit in work every mile or so along the roads of the Wolds" (Wright and Wright 1942). The specimens were numbered with a secret field numbering system, luckily his maps with the field numbers have been found and are in Hull Museums (M Boyd - verbal communication).

Ted and Willy Wright spent ten years visiting the chalk pits of the Yorkshire Wolds and published details of over 130 sites in 1942 ( and that excluded some railway cuttings that were in used at the time).

As part of the Hull Geological Society Centenary project in 1988 about 35 inland sites were studied, plus some temporary exposures. Some of the sites are large quarries, some are small exposures. Since then five sites have been lost to landfill, others are overgrown. The East Yorkshire RIGS Group has listed 22 Chalk pits are having a regional geological importance. There are also three pits that are SSSIs for their national geological importance.

Both the Society and the RIGS Group believe it is important to conserve the remaining chalk exposures and maintain access for geologists in the future.

Click here forthe case we are presenting to the public inquiry into Little Weighton Railway Cutting.

References:

Gaunt G D, B N Fletcher and C J Wood, 1992. The geology of the country around Kingston upon Hull and Brigg. British Geological Survey. HMSO London. ix + 172pp.

Whitham F 1991. The stratigraphy of the Upper Cretaceous Ferriby, Welton and Burnham Formations north of the Humber, north east England. Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society 48, 227-254.

Wilson V 1948. British Regional Geology. East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. H.M.S.O.

Wood C J & Smith E G 1978. Lithostratigraphical classification of the Chalk in North Yorkshire, Humberside and Lincolnshire. Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society 42, 263-287.

Wood C J 1980. Upper Cretaceous. p 92 105 of Kent P British Regional Geology. Geology of Eastern England from the Tees to the Wash. H.M.S.O. 155pp.

Wright C W & Wright E V 1942. The Chalk of the Yorkshire Wolds. Proceedings of the Geologists' Association 53, 112-127.