The Causey Pike Fault or Causey Pike Thrust is a major WSW-ENE trending fault within the Lower Paleozoic rocks of the English

Lake District The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes, forests, and mountains (or ''fells''), and its associations with William Wordswor ...

. It is named for

Causey Pike Causey Pike is a fell in the English Lake District. It is situated in the Newlands Valley, 5 km south-west of the town of Keswick. Even though it has a modest height of 637 metres (2,090 ft) it is one of the most distinctive fel ...

, where the fault was first recognised.

Extent

The Causey Pike Fault has been recognised across the entire outcrop of the Lake District

inlier An inlier is an area of older rock (geology), rocks surrounded by younger rocks. Inliers are typically formed by the erosion of overlying younger rocks to reveal a limited outcrop, exposure of the older underlying rocks. Fault (geology), Faulting o ...

, extending about 35 km from near

Ennerdale Bridge Ennerdale Bridge is a hamlet in the county of Cumbria, England. It is in the civil parish of Ennerdale and Kinniside. It had a total population taken at the 2011 census of 220. Description Ennerdale Bridge lies at the confluence of Croasdal ...

in the west, to near Troutbeck in the east. A possible continuation of the fault to the east has been recognised in the

Cross Fell Cross Fell is the highest mountain in the Pennines of Northern England and the highest point in England outside the Lake District. It is located in the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It lies within the county of Cumbria and ...

inlier, where it also juxtaposes two differing parts of the

Skiddaw Group ''For the Skiddaw group of hills, see Skiddaw Group'' The Skiddaw Group is a group of sedimentary rock formations named after the mountain Skiddaw in the English Lake District. The rocks are almost wholly Ordovician in age ( Tremadoc through Are ...

Recognition

It juxtaposes two successions dominated by

mudrock Mudrocks are a class of fine-grained siliciclastic sedimentary rocks. The varying types of mudrocks include siltstone, claystone, mudstone, slate, and shale. Most of the particles of which the stone is composed are less than and are too ...

s that are of similar age. To the north of the fault, the

Ordovician The Ordovician ( ) is a geologic period and System (geology), system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era (geology), Era. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period million years ago (Mya) to the start ...

Skiddaw Group is represented by the Kirk Stile Formation, to the south by the Buttermere Formation, both of

Arenig In geology, the Arenig (or Arenigian) is a time interval during the Ordovician period and also the suite of rocks which were deposited during this interval. History The term was first used by Adam Sedgwick in 1847 with reference to the "Areni ...

age. The younger sequence of volcanic rocks overlying the Skiddaw Group also differs, with the Eycott Volcanic Group to the north and the

Borrowdale Volcanic Group The Borrowdale Volcanic Group is a group of igneous rock formations named after the Borrowdale area of the Lake District, in England. They are Caradocian (late Ordovician) in age (roughly 450 million years old). It is thought that they represent t ...

to the south. The fault is described as a

thrust Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newton's third law. When a system expels or accelerates mass in one direction, the accelerated mass will cause a force of equal magnitude but opposite direction to be applied to that syst ...

near Causey Pike, where metasomatised rocks of the

Crummock Water Crummock Water is a lake in the Lake District in Cumbria, North West England situated between Buttermere to the south and Loweswater to the north. Crummock Water is long, wide and deep. The River Cocker is considered to start at the north of ...

Aureole An aureola or aureole (diminutive of Latin ''aurea'', "golden") is the radiance of luminous cloud which, in paintings of sacred personages, surrounds the whole figure. In Romance languages, the noun Aureola is usually more related to the d ...

are emplaced over

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

olistoliths of the Buttermere Formation, but the overall displacement on this structure is oblique, with a significant component of sinistral (left lateral)

strike-slip In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

motion.

Age of movement

The differences in stratigraphy and interpreted

depositional environment In geology, depositional environment or sedimentary environment describes the combination of physical, chemical, and biological processes associated with the deposition of a particular type of sediment and, therefore, the rock types that will be ...

across the fault may indicate that the fault was originally a normal fault, active during deposition of the Skiddaw Group. The oblique slip movement on the fault occurred during the Acadian Orogeny, at least in part postdating the

contact metamorphism Metamorphism is the transformation of existing rock (the protolith) to rock with a different mineral composition or texture. Metamorphism takes place at temperatures in excess of , and often also at elevated pressure or in the presence of chem ...

that caused the development of the Crummock Water Aureole (dated to about 401 Ma -

Emsian The Emsian is one of three faunal stages in the Early Devonian Epoch. It lasted from 407.6 ± 2.6 million years ago to 393.3 ± 1.2 million years ago. It was preceded by the Pragian Stage and followed by the Eifelian Stage. It is named after the ...

), which itself postdates the formation of the regional cleavage seen within the Skiddaw Group.

References

{{Reflist Geology of Cumbria