Abstract

The Department of Geological Sciences at Plymouth Polytechnic hosted a two day meeting of the Tectonic Studies Group on October 27 and 28, 1984. On the first day of the meeting 17 papers were presented on tectonic aspects of the Variscan orogen in SW England and related areas. On the second day two field excursions ran concurrently to the north Cornish coast (leaders G. E. Lloyd, J. S. Whalley and D. J. Sanderson) and the Roseland area of south Cornwall (leaders J. R. Andrews and R. P. Barnes).

The success of the conference in terms of papers presented and number of participants (well over 100) is a reflection of the continuing interest in the structural geology of SW England. It was the first conference for a number of years dealing specifically with the Variscan tectonics of SW England. A short symposium on the structure of SW England (co-ordinated by W. R. Dearman) was held in 1971 (see Proceedings of the Ussher Society2, Part 4, 1971) and in 1977 a meeting entitled ‘Tectonic evolution of the Variscides of the British Isles’ was held at University College, Swansea (see Hancock 1983). In 1981 the thirty-fifth William Smith Lecture meeting included papers relating to the Variscan (or Hercynian) of SW England (Journal of the Geological Society134, Part 4, 1982). Following this in 1982 the Department of Geology at Trinity College, Dublin hosted a conference entitled ‘Variscan tectonics of the North Atlantic Region’ which included several papers on SW England (see Hutton