The Geological Story of the Isle of Wight

by J. Cecil Hughes

LOWER AND UPPER GREENSAND

Chapter IV

THE LOWER GREENSAND

For ages the Wealden river flowed, and over its vast delta laid down its depth of river mud. The land was gradually sinking; for continually strata of river mud were laid down over the same area, all shallow-water strata, yet counting hundreds of feet in thickness in all. At last a change came. The land sank more rapidly, and in over the delta the sea water flowed. The sign of coming change is seen in the limestone band made up of small oysters near the top of the Wealden strata. Marine life was beginning to appear.

Above the Wealden shales in Sandown Bay may be seen a band of brown rock. It is in places much covered by slip, but big blocks lie about the shore, and it runs out to sea as a reef before we come to the Red Cliff. The blocks are seen to consist of a hard grey stone, but the weathered surfaces are soft and brown. They are full of fossils, all marine, sea shells and corals. The sea has washed in well over our Wealden delta, and with this bed the next formation, the Lower Greensand, begins. The bed is called the Perna bed, from a large bivalve shell (Perna mulleti) frequently to be found in it, though it is difficult to obtain perfect specimens showing the long hinge of the valve, which is a marked feature of the shell. Among other shells are a large round bivalve Corbis (Sphæra) corrugata, a flatter bivalve Astarte,—and a smaller oblong shell Panopæa,—also a peculiar shell of triangular form, Trigonia,—one species T. caudata has raised ribs running across it, another T. dædalea has bands of raised spots. A pretty little coral, looking like a collection of little stars, Holocystis elegans, one of the Astræidæ, is often very sharply weathered out.

Above the Perna bed lies a mass of blue clay, weathering brown, called the Atherfield clay, because it appears on a great scale at Atherfield on the south west of the Island. It is very like the clay of the Wealden shales, but is not divided into thin layers like shale.

Next we come to the fine mass of red sandstone which forms the vertical wall of Red Cliff. Not many fossils are to be found in these strata. Let us note the beauty of colouring of the Red Cliff—pink and green, rich orange and purple reds. And then let us pass to the other side of the anticline, and walk on the shore to Shanklin. Here we see the red sandstone rocks again, but now dipping to the south. You probably wonder why these red cliffs are called Greensand. But look at the rocks where they run out as ledges on the shore towards Shanklin. Here they are dark green. And this is really their natural colour. They are made of a mixture of sand and clay coloured dark green by a mineral called glauconite. Grains of glauconite can easily be seen in a handful of sand,—better with a magnifying glass. This mineral is a compound of iron, with silica and potash, and at the surface of the rock it is altered chemically, and oxide of iron is formed—the same thing as rust. And that colours all the face of the cliff red. The iron is also largely responsible for our finding so few fossils in these strata. By chemical changes, in which the iron takes part, the material of the shells is destroyed.[3] Near Little Stairs hollows in the rock may be seen, where large oyster shells have been. In some you may find a broken piece of shell, but the shells have been mostly destroyed. Nearer Shanklin we shall find large oysters, Exogyra sinuata, in the rock ledges exposed at low tide. Some are stuck together in masses. Evidently there was an oyster bank here. And here the shells have not been destroyed like those in the cliff.

From black bands in the cliff water full of iron oozes out, staining the cliff red and yellow and orange, and trickling down, stains the flint stones lying on the shore a bright orange. At the foot of the cliff you may sometimes see what looks like a bed of conglomerate, i.e., a bed of rounded pebbles cemented together. This does not belong to the cliff, but is made up of the flint pebbles on the shore, and the sand in which they lie, cemented into a solid mass by the iron in the water which has flowed from the cliff. It is a modern conglomerate, and shows us how old conglomerates were formed, which we often find in the various strata. The cement, however, in these is not always iron oxide. It may be siliceous or of other material. The iron-charged water is called chalybeate; springs at Shanklin and Niton at one time had some fame for their strengthening powers. The strata we have been examining are known as the Ferruginous sands, i.e., iron sands (Lat. ferrum, "iron"). Beyond Shanklin is a fine piece of cliff. Look up at it, but beware of going too close under it. The upper part consists of a fine yellow sand called the Sandrock. At the base of this are two bands of dark clay. These bands become filled with water, and flow out, causing the sandrock which rests on them to break away in large masses, and fall on to the beach.

It is clay bands such as these which are the cause of our Undercliffs in the Isle of Wight. Turn the point, and you see exactly how an undercliff is formed. You see a wide platform at the level of the clay, which has slipped out, and let down the sandrock which rested on it. Beyond Luccombe Chine a large landslip took place in 1910, a great mass of cliff breaking away, and leaving a ravine behind partly filled with fallen pine trees. The whole fallen mass has since sunk lower and nearer to the sea. The broken ground overgrown with trees called the Landslip, as well as the whole extent of the ground from Ventnor and Niton, has been formed in a similar way. But the clay which by its slip has produced these is another clay called the Gault, higher up in the strata. At the top of the high cliff near Luccombe Chine a hard gritty stratum of rock called the Carstone is seen above the Sandrock, and above it lies the Gault clay, which flows over the edge of the cliff.