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Letter to the Editor |
Resident Staff Tutor in Shropshire, Department of Extramural Studies, University of Birmingham
To the geologist Shropshire is a classical county. The endless variety of the county's rocks and fossils (every geological system except the Cretaceous and Tertiary is represented) has attracted geologists for nearly 200 years including some of the greatest names in British Geology: Murchison, Sedgwick, Salter, Lapworth, Cobbold, Whittard, to mention just a few. Shropshire villages and place-names are recorded in such classic terms as Longmyndian, Uriconian, Wenlock, Ludlow, Farlovian, Dittonian, Caradoc, etc. Almost every turn in a Shropshire lane reveals a place-name engraved in the mind of every geologist, or perhaps a view portrayed in Murchison's Silurian System. The varied geology gives Shropshire a unique and beautiful landscape, as yet relatively untouched, apart from the Coalbrookdale coalfield area, by urbanization.
The publications of the Institute of Geological Sciences; the Church Stretton memoir with its One-Inch map and the admirable new 2
Inch maps and guides; the Shrewsbury and Oswestry memoirs and One-Inch maps; the recent new editions of the regional guides for the Welsh Border-land and Central England; attract geologists and students to the county in ever increasing numbers. In addition 2 Inch maps of Telford New Town and the classical Ludlow area will be published soon.
These government publications are supplemented by earlier work of those listed above and by more recent work on the Ordovician by Dean, and the Silurian by Holland, Lawson and Walmsley and other members of the Ludlow Research Group. The Old Red Sandstone has been extensively studied by Ball, Dineley and White, and others.
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