River South Tyne and Tynebottom Mine

Also within

Cumbria County North Pennines Scenic Area Pennine Way National Trail

Condition (Natural England)

Habitats

Fast flowing river and stream

Geology & landscape

Geological Period: Quaternary · Rock Type: Granite, Limestone

Landscape processes: Fluvial, Volcanic / Igneous

Description

Description This site is located at the small village of Garrigill, five kilometres south east of Alston. It comprises the River South Tyne, its terraces and the adjacent workings of Tynebottom Mine. The River South Tyne at Garrigill is important for fluvial geomorphology and is unusual in northern England in demonstrating a sequence of well preserved river terraces. Six unpaired terraces occur above the contemporary flood plain. Their preservation reflects an historical tendency of incision by the river and a relatively stable planform position. Consequently there has been little lateral movement of the river and destruction of terraces as in the case of other rivers in the area. The South Tyner at Garrigill therefore provides an exceptional record of Holocene changes in incision and sedimentation in a large river in the Pennines. Palaeochannels on the terrace surfaces contain organic sediments which have significant potential for establishing a dating framework. The Tynebottom mine workings, still accessible by a long adit, are replacement flats in the Tynebottom Limestone which is here directly underlain by the whin Sill. Extensive dumps at the adit mouth have yielded an interesting secondary mineral assemblage including erythrite, brocantite, devilline, wroewolfeite, linarite and gypsum. In particular, the presence of erythriteled to mineralogical investigations of the nature of Co and Ni minerals in the primary ore and the subsequent recent discovery of not only a wide range of Co Ni arsenides, but also aparagenetically late suite of rare silver minerals associated with Cu rather than Pb. This in turn has raised fundamental questions concerning the genesis of the North Pennine ores and the role played by both the whin Sill and the Tynehead cupola of the Weardale Granite. The mine is therefore not only important as a locality for rare secondary minerals on the dumps and unusual primary phases, but is one of the few accessible workings where important genetic problems can be studied in detail.

Plant communities