Crickley Hill Landslip EarthCache
Hidden : 8/23/2011
Difficulty:
1 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size: other (other)

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Geocache Description:


TO CLAIM THIS CACHE YOU MUST SEND YOUR ANSWERS TO THE CO (see below).

At the top of Crickley Hill is Crickley Hill Country Park which has extensive views over Gloucester and the Severn Vale across to the Malvern Hills. On good clear days, you can see into Wales, to the Black Mountains and the Sugar Loaf (by Abergavenny). The site is jointly owned by Gloucestershire County Council and the National Trust. The park is wardened by members of the Gloucestershire County Council Sites Warden Service and frequently boosted by volunteers from the Cotswold Warden Service at weekends. They are more than happy to answer any of your questions and can be found at the Visitor Centre by the car parks. Please note that the car parks are now Pay & Display.

Most of the park is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), with a range of habitats from unimproved limestone grassland to mature beech woodland. Part of the site is a Scheduled Ancient Monument (SAM) which has been intensively excavated over a period of 25 years.

Crickley Hill is also an important area of geological interest due to the Jurassic limestone outcrops around its boundary. It is an excellent area for the study of wildlife and ecology with over 200 species of wild flower, 34 species of butterfly, and a wide range of other invertebrates.



The rocks on Crickley Hill are part of the Birdlip Limestone Formation (Inferior Oolite Group) which is from the Aalenian period, part of the Middle Jurassic age.


  • Scissum Beds (Leckhampton Member) are the lowest unit of the Middle Jurassic age and consist of sandy limestones containing many fragmented fossils.

  • Lower Limestone (Crickley Member) is a finer grained oolitic limestone containing pieces of crinoid stem and fragmented shells.

  • Pea Grit (Crickley Member) is easily recognised due to it being largely made of pea-sized grains called oncoids. It is extremely fossiliferious and contains: echinoids (sea urchins), brachiopods, bivalves and corals.


  • Capping the hill is Lower Freestone (Cleeve Cloud Member) which was widely used as a building stone but here it was not suitable for ashlar (dressed stone work).
Under these is Whitby Mudstone Formation (Lias Group) which sometimes can be seen further down the hill when the livestock chew up the ground. These soft clays and silts are the reason why the Cotswold Escarpment has one of the highest concentrations of landslips in England.



There are several old quarries on Crickley Hill, some worked by hand over a hundred years ago. Between the wars, stone was quarried by hand and burnt in lime kilns on Crickley Hill, to produce lime mortar for the building industry. There is evidence of the coke breeze (finely powdered coke) that was used in these kilns still on the hill. The quarry you are by now (now the car park), was worked by heavy machinery in the early 1960’s (stopped in 1964); the stone was crushed on site and sold as building infill. You will see a large gull (quarrymans term for gulley formed along a joint), on the left of the quarry, this was a joint that has widened as a result of landslip on the escarpment. Overtime it has been infilled with loose material from above, which has been cemented together by lime rich water passing through it.

Another sign of landslip is at N51°50.833 W002°06.253. From here you will see the land running north east along the escarpment edge becomes hummocky, the ground is uneven which was the result from landslip along the escarpment edge.


To claim this Earth cache you need to answer the following questions:

  1. Looking at the quarry face across the car park from you, why do you think the Lower Freestone wasn’t suitable for dressed stone work (ashlar)?
  2. Crickley Hill is made of limestone, what other near by hills you can see (within 15 miles), do you think are made of limestone? There is an information board at N 51° 50.691 W 002° 06.288 that will help with names.
  3. What do you think the primary driving force behind a landslip is?
Please ONLY email me via my profile the answers. I will email you back if there is an issue with your answers but please, go ahead and log the cache.

It would be nice (optional) if you also uploaded a picture of your visit to the site.


If you are interested in the geology of the whole area, there is a very good leaflet available (there is a small charge for it), with a suggested trail to follow, from the Visitor Centre by the car parks or via the Gloucestershire Geology Trust website.

Published with the kind permission of Gloucestershire County Council Sites Warden Service.

Additional Hints (No hints available.)



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