Excursion to Hastings. Saturday, June 22nd, 1907 - Geologists’ Association excursion

In Preparation

Excursion to Hastings. Saturday, June 22nd, 1907 – Geologists’ Association excursion

DIRECTOR : W. J. LEWIS ABBOTT, F.G.S.

EXCURSION SECRETARY : A. C. YOUNG, 17, Vicars Hill, Lewisham, S.E.

Train leaves Charing Cross (S.E.R.) 9.6 a.m. : calling at Waterloo, Cannon Street, London Bridge, and New Cross; at each of which stations members can obtain ordinary cheap excursion tickets to Hastings. Price 6s. each.

Meet Director at Warrior Square Station, St. Leonards. Proceed to 8, Grand Parade (few minutes' walk), where light refreshments will be provided by Mrs. Lewis Abbott. Numerous objects of interest will be on view, illustrating things to be seen later in the field. Drive to Fairlight Church along part of the Fairlight-Brightling anticline, offering magnificent views of South Wealden denudation. Visit quarry in Milk White Sandstone near the base of the Ashdown Sands. Walk through wild and beautiful scenery, past several Neolithic and Hastings Kitchen Midden Men Settlements, to a remarkable implementiferous drift recently discovered by the Director. It would appear to be in an old dip-slope valley which originally drained from the anticline southwards. Since then a deep strike valley has originated, truncating this valley and effacing its upper reaches; the cutting back of the coast and the formation of the English Channel attacking its other end. The drift contains a large proportion of purple and various-coloured quartzites, lydites, and other rocks, and a few hard-worn flints either deeply yellow-brown stained, or jasperized or opalized, calling to mind those of the plateaux. Most of the flints were worked with heavy flaking into characteristic forms, before they entered this colour-giving matrix, some showing signs of rough water wear. In Neolithic times there was a settlement here, and a large quantity of scrapers, small axes, &c., have been recovered. These neoliths are uniformly slightly weathered perfectly uncoloured or bleached. There is also a third set of implements made in Neolithic times from the old brown flakes! Descend to shore near Lovers' Seat. From Fairlight Glen eastward, the cliffs consist of the Fairlight clays, and are represented by a series of alternations of highly and beautifully-coloured mottled and other clays, shales, and sandrocks. Immense landslips have recently occurred, exhibiting cross-bedding and apparently unconformity, and offer special opportunities for the study of those important beds. Brilliant lignite, Endogenites, erosa, and other vegetation, and a few unios and other fossils can be obtained. Near Ecclesbourne some very remarkable structures—false breccias, cat's brains, oolitic limonite, &c., can be studied. The whole of the Ashdown series is also represented, and offers very fine conditions for study; as also does the Wadhurst Clay. From both of these series, the characteristic fossils can be obtained. Meat tea, 1s. 3d., at Hastings Restaurant, 10, Queen's Road. Carriages about 1s. each. Walking distance about 4 miles, most of which is rather heavy, but arrangements can he made for shortening the walking distance. Return train, Hastings 7.15. Arriving Charing Cross 9.15. REFERENCES. Geological Survey Map, Sheet 5. 8s. 6d. 1833. Mantell's Geology S.E. of England. 1836. Fitton's Strata in the S.E. England. Trans. Geol. Soc., series 2, vol. iv. 1875. TOPLEY, W., Geology of the Weald. 1878. Dixon's Geology of Sussex. 1886. Proceedings of Geological Association. Vol. ix, p. 544 (part 8, 1s.). 1891. Record of Excursions. Geo. Assoc., pp. 114 to 129. 1895. Seward's British Museum Cat, of Wealden Plants. 2 vols.

SECTION FROM BULVERHITHE TO CLIFF END, FAIRLIGHT, HASTINGS. (After Topley, with descriptions and additions by W. J. L. A.) The Wadhurst clay does not occur in the cliffs at St. Leonards. A small patch occurs beyond the railway. Ashdown Sands do not extend so far east as shown. East of Lovers’ Seat the cliffs are all Fairlight Clays.

Reference Lewis Abbott, W.J. and Young, A.C., 1907, Excursion to hastings: Saturday, June 22nd 1907. Vol 20 (3) p169-174