West Hoathly

Also within

West Sussex County High Weald Scenic Area

Condition (Natural England)

Geology & landscape

Geological Feature: Rock Outcrop · Rock Type: Ironstone, Mudstone

Description

Description West Hoathly is a working brickclay pit. Sections in this pit exposes up to nine metres of clays at the base of the Wealden Wadhurst Clay Formation lower Hastings Beds Group and occasionally the underlying Top Ashdown Pebble Bed. The Wadhurst Clay sediments exposed at West Hoathly show a gradual passage upward's from silty mudstone with plant detritus and ironstone bands to less silty and non silty clays with layers of Neomiodon shells, overall suggesting a wanning of terrestrial influence. Importantly, some of the shells are aragonitic, their 13 C/12 C ratios suggesting temporarily enhanced salinities. From time to time Ashdown Beds, capped by the discontinuous Top Pebble Bed, have been exposed in ditches in the pit floor. West Hoathly lies at a critical position near the northwest extremity of the Wealden Wadhurst Clay outcrop. During Wealden times this position lay close to the postulated gap in the London Massif bounding the northern edge of the Wealden Basin through which the northern Boreal Sea intermittently flooded. West Hoathly is therefore a key locality for studies of the Wadhurst lagoonal/lacustrine environment. In particular, it yields evidence important in the following disciplines, palaeobotany spores, upstanding plants, palaeozoology ostracods, bivalves, gastropods, fish, clay mineralogy, geochemistry ironstones, stable C isotopes in aragonitic Neomiodon valves. All these are important for interpreting environmental conditions at the northwestern extremity of the Wadhurst Clay outcrop.