Clock House Brickworks

Also within

Surrey County

Condition (Natural England)

Geology & landscape

Rock Type: Siltstone

Description

Area, 32.4ha; 80.1 acres Description This brick pit shows beds in the lower part of the Weald Clay Group, stratigraphically above the strata seenat the GCR SIL at Warnham. Like Warnham, it is one of the most important exposures of Weald Clay. Multidisciplinary evidence on the palaeoenvironments may be seen here, including, warm temperate/subtropical subaerial plant fragments; insect fauna, including termites and cicadas; land reptile bones; freshwater aquatic plants, including upstanding Lycopodites; also aquatic animals including Cypridea, Unio, large Viviparus, fish and aquatic reptiles; brackish non cypridean ostracods, Filosina, Ophiomorpha burrows. Analysis of preserved aragonite shells gives C isotope support for salinity interpretations. The insects are highly important and the site has yielded several thousand insect remains, belonging to some eleven orders. The fauna includes the earliest described social insect, a termite. The fossils occur primarily in discarded siltstone concretions, the structure of which indicates that many of them represent lithified scour fills. Sedimentary structures in the Clock House Sand Member BGS Bed 3 record a decreasing flow regime, ending in sub aerial exposure. Its extra basinal detritus is different from that at Warnham, being almost entirely Cornubian in origin high K feldspar, tourmaline, microcline and kyanite, etc. This is an outstanding site with great potential for palaeontological and sedimentological research.