Area: 13.3 hectares.
Other Information:
A new site. Site listed as of national importance in the Geological Conservation Review.
Description and Reasons for Notification
This coastal site has the most accessible and revealing section in the Trentishoe Formation of the Hangman Sandstone Group. The Hangman Sandstone represents the Middle Devonian sequence of North Devon and Somerset. It formed at a time when the area to the north (parts of what is now South Wales and the Borders) was one of non-deposition or even erosion. These sandstones thus mark a shift southwards of fluvial sediments more typically occurring within the Brownstone group. The Trentishoe Formation, which contains interbedded ephemeral lake sediments, is shown here to have been deposited by distal, largely unconfined, sheet floods, a type of stream deposit not seen elsewhere in the British Old Red Sandstone.