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Geological Excursions in the Bristol District

Geological Excursions in the Bristol District

Geology needs rocks! And Bristol has many places to look at rocks AND many different rocks to look at!

Indeed the first (1912) excursion guide to the Bristol District (by S. H. Reynolds, the third professor of geology at the university) said “Owing to the remarkably varied character of its rocks, the Bristol district seems specially marked out for a geological handbook.”

Reynolds’ guide was superseded, in 1977, by “Geological Excursions in the Bristol District” edited by Professor R. J. G. Savage (ISBN 0 901239 22 4), and it is this which I make use of on this web site. It is unlikely that the present Department of Earth Sciences will produce an up to date version of this guide, but fortunately it is a very good guide and I do not think that there is anything “wrong” in it. Much may be out of date, and interpretations be different, but the rocks are the same as in 1977, and will be for the next few millennia.

The guide was published by the University, but the University is no longer a publisher. Most of the contributors are no longer with us, and a source in the Department was not able to suggest anyone to approach for permission to use the contents of the book. If any interested party objects to things I extract, I will, of course, remove it from this site.

Each chapter is in PDF format and can be downloaded. It can be opened with Adobe Reader which you probably have already, but if not can be obtained, free, from HERE.

Geological Excursions in the Bristol District

Front Matter Original Scans
Chapter 1 – The southern Malvern Hills by J. W. Cowie and D. L. Speedyman Original Scans
Chapter 2 – The Quantock and Brendon Hills, West Somerset and North Devon by D. L. Dineley Original Scans
Chapter 3 – The sedimentology and structure of the Upper Palaeozoic rocks at Portishead by B.P.J. Williams and P. L. Hancock Original Scans
Chapter 4 – Volcanic rocks of the Bristol region by D. L. Speedyman Original Scans
Chapter 5 – The Carboniferous Limestone of the Mendip Hills by R. J. G. Savage Original Scans
Chapter 6 – Limestone features and the geomorphological evolution of the Mendip Hills by D. Ingle Smith Original Scans
Chapter 7 – Fossil plants from the Somerset coalfield by K. C. Allen Original Scans
Chapter 8 – The geology of Cattybrook brick pit, Almondsbury by P. L. Hancock and B.P.J. Williams Original Scans
Chapter 9 – The Mesozoic strata of the Mendip Hills by R. J. G. Savage Original Scans
Chapter 10 – Coastal exposures near Blue Anchor, Watchet and St. Audrie’s Bay, North Somerset by D. Hamilton and A. Whittaker Original Scans
Chapter 11 – Aust Cliff by D. Hamilton Original Scans
Chapter 12 – Jurassic rocks of the Bath area by A. B. Hawkins Original Scans
Chapter 13 – William Smith localities by R. Bradshaw Original Scans
Chapter 14 – The south and mid Cotswolds by J. W. Murray and P. L. Hancock Original Scans
Chapter 15 – Westbury and Northern Wiltshire by A. N. Insole and C. A. Wright Original Scans
Chapter 16 – The Quaternary of the North Somerset area by A. B. Hawkins Original Scans
Bibliography Original Scans

You can print out the PDF file on an A4 duplex (double sided) printer using Adobe Reader.

  • Click File then Print.
  • In the dialogue box which appears, select your printer and how many copies you want,
  • for Pages to Print select All ,
  • for Page Sizing and Handling select Booklet,
  • for Booklet subset select Both sides,
  • Binding should be selected as Left,
  • Orientation should be Portrait and
  • leave Auto-rotate pages within each sheet Unselected.
  • Then click on Print!

These seem to be the only settings which give a correctly printed booklet – it took the writer much experimentation and wasted paper to find these settings!

I believe you can print a booklet using a printer which prints on one side of the paper at a time but you need to turn the paper by hand for this. I will allow you to work out the details of this for yourselves!

Because some information is lost when the chapter contents are scanned and converted into text and the figures coloured, I have included the original scans. So if you think I have got something wrong you can look at the original and correct my silly mistakes. So for each chapter there are two links. The first gives you my version of the chapter, the second, the material from which I worked.