Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
FIG
172.
The Lygon Arms Hotel in the village of Broadway (Fig. 168,
c5
), 8 km southeast
of Evesham. The hotel is typical of many traditional Cotswolds buildings and is made us-
ing Middle Jurassic oolitic limestones. (Copyright Peter Oliver, Herefordshire and
Worcestershire Heritage Trust)
Ebrington Hill (
c2
), 5 km northeast of Chipping Camden, is the northernmost
point on the well-defined section of the Cotswold Edge, where the scarp is capped by
Middle Jurassic oolites. This hill reaches an elevation of 259 m and looks out over the
floor of the Avon Valley some 200 m below. The lower slopes are formed in the Marl-
stone Rock Bed (marked
M
in Fig. 168), while the top is made of the resistant lime-
stones of the Oolite layer.
Bredon Hill (
c1
) dominates the low ground where the Rivers Severn and Avon
meet. It has a similar structure of resistant layers to Ebrington Hill, though many of
the steeper slopes have been covered by blocks of limestone that have collapsed from
the edge of the outcrop and slipped down the slopes. The isolation of Bredon Hill from
the main Cotswold Edge is due to vigorous back-cutting by the headwaters of eroding
streams. These streams must have increasingly encircled and detached this prominent-
but previously attached-point on the Edge.
The position and direction of trend of the Cotswold Hills, particularly the well-
defined Cotswold Front, is a direct result of the level to which the landscape of the
Area has been eroded at the moment. As erosion continues to lower the landscape the
Front will move to the southeast, because that is the direction in which the layers slope.
