The Rock Gallery UK geology

THE GEOLOGY OF BRITAIN

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The British Isles has a remarkable variety of rock types for its size, providing evidence for tropical deserts to glaciers and just about everything in between. Huge mountain ranges once existed over Scotland and South-West England, the roots of which are now exposed revealing igneous rocks such as gabbro and granite, and metamorphic rocks such as gneiss and slate. Much of the rest of the country consists of great thicknesses of sedimentary rocks, mostly laid down by shallow and deep seas over hundreds of millions of years. This patchwork of rock types provides a magnificently diverse surface geology, revealed in multi-coloured splendour on a geological map of Britain. Click on the image title (right) for a table of UK rock formations.

The geological map appears complex at first sight but it is possible to quickly make sense of it, particularly the sedimentary rocks that make up the surface of most of Britain. For example, the oldest sedimentary rocks occur in the extreme north-west of Scotland and the surface rocks get younger as you move south until the youngest rocks of all are reached in East Anglia. The rocks represent the four major eras of geological time (Precambrian, Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Caenozoic). Click on the image title (right) for maps showing the approximate age of surface sedimentary rocks.

Geological maps are available for the whole of Britain from the British Geological Survey (BGS). Maps are usually of two types: bedrock & superficial or just bedrock. Bedrock geology (formerly called solid geology) is, as the name suggests, all the main rocks which make up the structure of Britain. Superficial or Quaternary geology (formerly called 'drift) is the relatively thin cover of varied deposits (mostly sand, gravel and clay) laid down during the Ice Age (the Quaternary period) by glaciers and rivers etc. For large scale maps of local areas it is usually essential to have the bedrock and superficial geology on a map so you can identify everything beneath the soil cover. For small scale maps (e.g. the whole of the UK) the addition of the superficial geology would make the map unneccessarily complex and so these are published as bedrock only. For much of the country it is the bedrock geology that is visible and is responsible for the shaping of the landscape.

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