The Pennine Basin is a

sedimentary basin Sedimentary basins are region-scale depressions of the Earth's crust where subsidence has occurred and a thick sequence of sediments have accumulated to form a large three-dimensional body of sedimentary rock. They form when long-term subside ...

which was active during the Carboniferous Period and which reached from the

Southern Uplands The Southern Uplands ( gd, Na Monaidhean a Deas) are the southernmost and least populous of mainland Scotland's three major geographic areas (the other two being the Central Lowlands and the Grampian Mountains and the Highlands, as illustrate ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

in the north to the former

Wales-London-Brabant Massif The London-Brabant Massif or London-Brabant Platform is, in the tectonics, tectonic structure of Europe, a high (tectonics), structural high or massif that stretches from the Rhineland in western Germany across northern Belgium (in the province of ...

in the

English Midlands The Midlands (also referred to as Central England) are a part of England that broadly correspond to the Kingdom of Mercia of the Early Middle Ages, bordered by Wales, Northern England and Southern England. The Midlands were important in the Ind ...

to the south. Sediments deposited within the basin are now exposed at the surface throughout the Pennines but are also present beneath the surface over a much wider area of northern England and indeed into northeast

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...

and just across the border into Scotland.Aitkenhead, N. et al 2002 ''British regional geology: the Pennines and adjacent areas'' (4th edn) (British Geological Survey, Nottingham) The basin was complex and consisted, at different times, of a variety of sub-basins separated by blocks across which typically sedimentation continued but resulted in much thinner rock sequences. The term, the ' Pennine Block-and-basin Province' is frequently used in literature to describe the situation which prevailed particularly during the lower Carboniferous.

References

Geology of the Pennines Structural geology Geology of Lancashire {{UK-geology-stub