Quaternary fluvial, pedogenic and mass-movement processes at St George’s Down, Newport, Isle of Wight

Abstract

Recent geological mapping on the Isle of Wight by the British Geological Survey has shown the ‘Plateau Gravel’ to be a mixture of fluvial, solifluction, pedogenic and marine deposits ranging from pre-Anglian to Holocene age. As part of the resurvey of the island, several new exposures of the ‘Plateau Gravel’ between Newport and Downend were examined. A working gravel pit on St George's Down, near Newport, revealed a succession of flint gravels with an inter-bedded sequence of laminated silts. An upper in situ succession of pre-Anglian fluvial gravels caps the plateau, but a second, probably younger suite of gravel-rich sediments is exposed in a quarry on a topographically lower spur. These overlie in situ Clay-with-flints resting on Upper Cretaceous Chalk. These lower sediments are well exposed and display a complex stratigraphy. They consist predominantly of flint gravel, but include a dipping succession of laminated silts and palaeosols preserved in a hollow or small channel feature, intercalated between two distinct soliflucted cold-stage gravel sheets. Palynological and pedological evidence analysis suggests that these laminated silts and sands were deposited under a temperate climate but with frequent episodes of disruption caused by mass-movement and possibly freeze–thaw. The age of these laminated sediments are not known with any certainty but are likely to date to a temperate interval within the Late Pleistocene. The top of the laminated unit is cut by a heavily cryoturbated horizon presumed to be of Devensian age