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| A small exposure of the Dalton Rock |
Having abandoned my search for the Wickersley Rock in the Listerdale Estate, I carried on with my walk through Brecks Plantation and Black Carr, where I had identified a couple of streams on the Ordnance Survey map, which emerge from beneath Wickersley Rock and flow across older mudstones of the Pennine Upper Coal Measures Formation.
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| The area around the Brecks and Listerdale |
These and a couple of other streams converge to form Dalton Brook, which occupies a moderately deep valley that has been cut into the Dalton Rock and flows northwards to Dalton and then on to the River Don.
As at Shirtcliff Wood and Bowden Housteads Wood, I had hoped that I would find exposures of rocks in the hillside or in the stream banks. Within a few minutes, I found a place where numerous small pieces of flaggy sandstone littered the slope beside the path and, looking very closely, a few very small outcrops could just be seen.
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| Barely visible outcrops of Dalton Rock |
Thinking that this was probably the Dalton Rock, I obtained a decent sized sample with my Estwing hammer for later examination and carried on with my walk to find a streamlet – far away from the old quarries - that was full of large pieces of worked sandstone.
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| Blocks of worked sandstone |
I would have to speak to a local historian to further obtain information about these, together with others that seem to be randomly scattered around the area - including a large block of sandstone that had apparently been recently sampled by another geologist before me.
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| A previously sampled block of sandstone |
I collected one of the pieces of stone that had been discarded and then went to explore the stream banks, where I found exposures of head, composed of large unsorted fragments of sandstone and soil that had moved down slope by solifluction during the Quaternary Period.
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| A stream section through a deposit of head |
The whole area seems to be covered in such unconsolidated material and I didn’t see any signs of the Dalton Rock, with the only bedrock exposed being the occasional mudstone, including one relatively large section that has been partially weathered to yellow clay.
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| Mudstone weathered to yellow clay |
After looking at the various stream banks, I started to make my way up the path towards the east side of the Brecks housing estate, where I discovered another small exposure of Dalton Rock, with flaggy beds similar in thickness to those seen near Black Carr.
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| An exposure of flaggy Dalton Rock |
The four samples of sandstone that I collected are all medium grained and micaceous, with similar light brown/yellowish colouring that is a result of iron staining and, although I would like to see a sample of the Wickersley Rock for comparison – and ideally undertake an examination with a petrological microscope – I feel confident that I now have some Dalton Rock in my collection.
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| Specimens collected when investigating the Dalton Rock |
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