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)

References

Carboniferous England Geology of the Pennines Geology of Northumberland {{geology-stub

See also

References