The South Coast Region - Southern England - page 131

Weald uplift in the bedrock, formed by a phase of compression and upward movement
in the crust about 30 million years ago. The neat map pattern of concentric layers of
bedrock (Fig. 129) and scenery is the direct result of the way the Wealden structure has
been bevelled downwards as river and stream erosion has lowered the ground surface
over those last few tens of millions of years. Figure 129 also shows that some of the
mapped boundaries between the main layers are locally quite jagged; a result of the
presence of much smaller local faults and folds, often trending, very approximately,
east-west. These small features have probably formed as a result of the movement of
larger faults at greater depth.
FIG 126. Location map for Area 6.
Six distinctive Landscapes can be identified in Area 6, labelled A to F in Figure
129. These are discussed in turn below.
Landscape A: The High Weald
This Landscape forms the northeastern corner of the Area. It is framed to the south,
west and north by Landscape B , the Low Weald. The scenery of the High Weald is
typically one of small wooded hills and valleys distributed in a weakly radial pattern,
so that some of the High Weald drainage is to the west and the north, draining via the
Medway into the Thames estuary. The rest of the drainage is southerly, via the headwa-
ters of the Adur, Ouse and Cuckmere to the south coast, along valleys carved through
the South Downs (Fig. 136).
The hills of the High Weald range in elevation between about 50 m and 250 m,
whereas the Low Weald is generally much lower and flatter. Erosion in the High Weald
to the west of Mountfield has exposed bedrock of latest Jurassic age identified as the