Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
flow figures and minor floodplains with young alluvium, but no significant areas of
ancient river terraces. Ice-laid material is present in small patches left on some of the
high ground during later landscape erosion.
East of the Cherwell, the low ground drained by the River Ray is mainly underlain
by Late Jurassic mudstones (quarried for brick-making east of Bicester) and is gen-
erally very flat, particularly south of Bicester and the M40 motorway. Here, Ot Moor
is a remarkable local area of Fen-like appearance where faulting has brought a strip
of Middle Jurassic Oolite material to the surface, and the topography and drainage re-
flect this. Southeast of Bicester, river erosion has picked out a number of discrete hills
with caps of Portlandian (latest Jurassic) limestones and Early Cretaceous material.
Between these hills and Bicester itself are two dome-like hills which have been much
quarried, but lack resistant caps. These may be relicts of features formed when the res-
istant Portlandian extended as far to the northwest as this.
