|
Barrow Hill Local Nature Reserve
Barrow Hill Local Nature Reserve is a local nature reserve situated in Pensnett in the county of West Midlands, England. Its most distinctive feature, Barrow Hill, is the eroded remnant of a high level igneous intrusion that was formed 315 million years ago during the Carboniferous period. The reserve was created in 2005. History The area was once woodland inside Pensnett Chase, which was mainly common land under the lordship of the Barons of Dudley. The hard volcanic rock (dolerite) that forms Barrow Hill was quarried in the 19th century for use as road stone. Another reminder of the industrial age in the reserve is a footpath that follows the course of one of the Earl of Dudley's private railways. The reserve was created in 2005. Location The reserve is located at Pensnett, near to St Marks Church and Russells Hall Hospital. Access is via Vicarage Lane, Pensnett. Landscape The reserve is dominated by Barrow Hill, the remains of an extinct volcano. The effects of quarrying ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pensnett
Pensnett is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley, West Midlands, England, south-west of central Dudley. Pensnett has been a part of Dudley since 1966, when the Brierley Hill Urban District, of which it was a part, was absorbed into the County Borough of Dudley, later the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley from 1974. Pensnett Chase The present Pensnett covers a small portion of what was a large common called Pensnett Chase in Kingswinford parish, but contiguous with Dudley Wood in Dudley. As such, it belonged to the lords of the manor, descending as part of the Dudley estate from medieval times. With Dudley Wood, it is probably the woodland mentioned in the Domesday Book as belonging to those manors. There is a rifle range on the chase at barrow bank which was being used for practice firing by volunteer regiments from at least 1860 through till 1920 with many Martini–Henry bullets being found by local metal detectorists. The name Pensnett is from the Celtic 'pen', f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dudley Castle
Dudley Castle is a ruined fortification in the town of Dudley, West Midlands, England. Originally a wooden motte and bailey castle built soon after the Norman Conquest, it was rebuilt as a stone fortification during the twelfth century but subsequently demolished on the orders of King Henry II. Rebuilding of the castle took place from the second half of the thirteenth century and culminated in the construction of a range of buildings within the fortifications by John Dudley. The fortifications were slighted by order of Parliament during the English Civil War and the residential buildings destroyed by fire in 1750. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century the site was used for fêtes and pageants. Today Dudley Zoo is located on its grounds. Its location, Castle Hill, is an outcrop of Wenlock Group limestone that was extensively quarried during the Industrial Revolution and which now, along with Wren's Nest Hill, is a scheduled monument of the best surviving remains of the l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Columnar Jointing
Columnar jointing is a geological structure where sets of intersecting closely spaced fractures, referred to as Joint (geology), joints, result in the formation of a regular array of polygonal Prism (geometry), prisms, or columns. Columnar jointing occurs in many types of igneous rocks and forms as the rock cools and contracts. Columnar jointing can occur in cooling lava flows and ashflow tuffs (ignimbrites), as well as in some shallow intrusions. Columnar jointing also occurs rarely in sedimentary rocks if they have been heated by nearby hot magma. The columns can vary from 3 meters to a few centimeters in diameter, and can be as much as 30 meters tall. They are typically parallel and straight, but can also be curved and vary in diameter. An array of regular, straight, and larger-diameter columns is called a colonnade; an irregular, less-straight, and smaller-diameter array is termed an entablature. The number of sides of the individual columns can vary from 3 to 8, with 6 sides ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bronze Age Britain
Bronze Age Britain is an era of British history that spanned from until . Lasting for approximately 1,700 years, it was preceded by the era of Neolithic Britain and was in turn followed by the period of Iron Age Britain. Being categorised as the Bronze Age, it was marked by the use of copper and then bronze by the prehistoric Britons, who used such metals to fashion tools. Great Britain in the Bronze Age also saw the widespread adoption of agriculture. During the British Bronze Age, large megalithic monuments similar to those from the Late Neolithic continued to be constructed or modified, including such sites as Avebury, Stonehenge, Silbury Hill and Must Farm. That has been described as a time "when elaborate ceremonial practices emerged among some communities of subsistence agriculturalists of western Europe". History Early Bronze Age (EBA), c. 2500–1500 BC There is no clear consensus on the date for the beginning of the Bronze Age in Great Britain and Ireland. Some sou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tumulus
A tumulus (plural tumuli) is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds or ''kurgans'', and may be found throughout much of the world. A cairn, which is a mound of stones built for various purposes, may also originally have been a tumulus. Tumuli are often categorised according to their external apparent shape. In this respect, a long barrow is a long tumulus, usually constructed on top of several burials, such as passage graves. A round barrow is a round tumulus, also commonly constructed on top of burials. The internal structure and architecture of both long and round barrows has a broad range; the categorization only refers to the external apparent shape. The method of may involve a dolmen, a cist, a mortuary enclosure, a mortuary house, or a chamber tomb. Examples of barrows include Duggleby Howe and Maeshowe. Etymology The word ''tumulus'' is Latin for 'mound' or 'small hill', which is derived from th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russells Hall Hospital
Russells Hall Hospital is an NHS general hospital located in Dudley, West Midlands, England, managed by the Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust. The hospital is south-west of the town centre on the A4101 road, which connects to the Kingswinford area of the borough. History The facility was first planned in the 1960s as a general hospital for Dudley and the surrounding area. The first phase of the hospital opened in the Russells Hall area of Dudley in 1976 as a laundry centre for the borough's hospitals, and the general hospital buildings were built within the next five years, but a shortage of equipment meant that it did not open to patients until March 1984, becoming fully operational in May that year. The new hospital included an accident and emergency unit to replace those at the Guest Hospital and the Corbett Hospital in Stourbridge. Around this time, the NHS first began to consider the closure of Guest Hospital. In 1992, plans were unveiled for Russells Hall to be expande ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Earl Of Dudley’s Railway
The Earl of Dudley’s Railway or Pensnett Railway, was a railway that developed from a single line opened in 1829 to, at its maximum extent, a long network around the Earl of Dudley’s Iron Works at Round Oak near Brierley Hill. History Origins In the 19th century, the Ward family, owners of Dudley Castle, had large holdings of land in the Black Country region of England. They had added to their possessions in the 18th century by the enclosure of Pensnett Chase which had formerly been common land and, much further back in time, a hunting ground for the Barons of Dudley. Much of this land covered coal seams and deposits of industrial material including iron ore and fire-clay. Canals had been cut into the Black Country region in the second half of the 18th century but not all were conveniently close to the mines of the Dudley Estate. It was therefore decided to construct a railway linking coal mines near Shut End to a purpose-built canal basin at Ashwood on the Staffo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dolerite
Diabase (), also called dolerite () or microgabbro, is a mafic, holocrystalline, subvolcanic rock equivalent to volcanic basalt or plutonic gabbro. Diabase dikes and sills are typically shallow intrusive bodies and often exhibit fine-grained to aphanitic chilled margins which may contain tachylite (dark mafic glass). ''Diabase'' is the preferred name in North America, while ''dolerite'' is the preferred name in the rest of the English-speaking world, where sometimes the name ''diabase'' refers to altered dolerites and basalts. Some geologists prefer to avoid confusion by using the name ''microgabbro''. The name ''diabase'' comes from the French ', and ultimately from the Greek - meaning "act of crossing over, transition". Petrography Diabase normally has a fine but visible texture of euhedral lath-shaped plagioclase crystals (62%) set in a finer matrix of clinopyroxene, typically augite (20–29%), with minor olivine (3% up to 12% in olivine diabase), magnetite (2%), and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pensnett Chase
Pensnett Chase was a wooded area of land owned by the Lords of Dudley Castle in the parishes of Kingswinford and Dudley (or mainly so). As a chase, it was originally used by them to hunt game in although it was also used as common land by local people. At some periods it was regarded as extending into Gornal, West Midlands, Gornal and including Baggeridge Country Park, Baggeridge Wood at one end and perhaps Cradley Heath at the other. By the 17th century the ancient woodlands had largely been cleared. In the early modern period, the Dudley portion of the Chase came to be known as Dudley Wood and the name was largely reserved for the portion in Kingswinford. This was in the 18th century an extensive area of commonland which was inclosure, inclosed in the late 18th century, with the mines reserved to the Earl of Dudley, lord of the manor. It extended from the area now called Pensnett through Brierley Hill to Quarry Bank. History Pensnett Chase, a wooded area to the south and w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century and has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century. The English language, the Anglican Church, and Engli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Geological Survey
The British Geological Survey (BGS) is a partly publicly funded body which aims to advance geoscientific knowledge of the United Kingdom landmass and its continental shelf by means of systematic surveying, monitoring and research. The BGS headquarters are in Keyworth, Nottinghamshire, England. Its other centres are located in Edinburgh, Wallingford, Cardiff and London. The current motto of the BGS is: ''Gateway to the Earth''. History and previous names The Geological Survey was founded in 1835 by the Board of Ordnance as the Ordnance Geological Survey, under Henry De la Beche. This was the world's first national geological survey. It remained a branch of the Ordnance Survey for many years. In 1965, it was merged with the Geological Museum and Overseas Geological Surveys, under the name of Institute of Geological Sciences. On 1 January 1984, the institute was renamed the British Geological Survey (and often referred to as the BGS), a name still carried today. Competenc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carboniferous
The Carboniferous ( ) is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic that spans 60 million years from the end of the Devonian Period million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Permian Period, million years ago. The name ''Carboniferous'' means "coal-bearing", from the Latin '' carbō'' ("coal") and '' ferō'' ("bear, carry"), and refers to the many coal beds formed globally during that time. The first of the modern 'system' names, it was coined by geologists William Conybeare and William Phillips in 1822, based on a study of the British rock succession. The Carboniferous is often treated in North America as two geological periods, the earlier Mississippian and the later Pennsylvanian. Terrestrial animal life was well established by the Carboniferous Period. Tetrapods (four limbed vertebrates), which had originated from lobe-finned fish during the preceding Devonian, became pentadactylous in and diversified during the Carboniferous, including early amphibian line ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
