The Northumberland Trough, also known as the Northumberland Basin, is an element of the
structural geology of northern
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 b ...
, the origin of which dates back to the
Carboniferous period when a
block and basin province was established throughout
the Pennine region.
The trough is an ENE-WSW aligned
half-graben, an asymmetric
depositional basin. It is defined to the south by the Stublick and Ninety Fathom
faults, which separate the trough from the
Alston Block. To the north, where its depth is least, the trough's boundary with the
Cheviot Block is less well-defined; nevertheless, the south-easterly down-throwing Featherwood and Alwinton faults can be identified along this margin. To the west, the trough is continuous with the
Solway Basin Solway may refer to:
Places Australia
*Solway, a neighbourhood of Ashburton, Victoria. a suburb of Melbourne
New Zealand
*Solway, New Zealand, a suburb of Masterton
United Kingdom
*Solway Firth, the inlet between the north west of England and so ...
. The surrounding blocks are buoyed up by
granite
Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...
batholiths maintaining these regions of the upper
crust as areas of raised relief.
[British Geological Survey. 1996, ''Tectonic Map of Britain, Ireland & adjacent areas'', Pharaoh et al. 1:1500 000 (Keyworth, BGS)]
See also
Geological Structure of Great Britain
The geological structure of Great Britain is complex, resulting as it does from a long and varied geological history spanning more than two billion years. This piece of the Earth's crust has experienced several episodes of mountain building or 'o ...
References
Carboniferous England
Geology of the Pennines
Geology of Northumberland
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