I trace samples of dioritic ‘Marginal’ rock between NT 97475 17206 and NT 96914 17281 to see whether there is any significant change in mafic content approaching the junction with the andesite.
I found no evidence, at least on Dunmoor Hill, for increasing mafic content towards the perimeter of the pluton. There are however local variations which are consistent with the principle of local fractionation bands within the Marginal.
Tag Archives: quartz monzo-diorite
Rigg Cairn, High Cantle to High Bleakhope
We find a coarse-grained granitic rock at NT 94016 16737. This is pinker with fewer large white plagioclase phenocrysts than the rocks of Hedgehope Hill and Great Standrop but it has a similar grain size. Most of the terrain is trackless peat bog lacking any exposure of bedrock.
Descending towards High Bleakhope, the pink medium-grained rock outcrops at NT 92469 16365. The outcrops around NT 92643 16262 are all of high colour index and correspond with the dioritic ‘marginal’ variety found on Dunmoor Hill and at Linhope Spout.
In places there are xenoliths of what appear to be hornfelsed andesite.
Dunmoor Hill
We make a return visit to Dunmoor Hill. The summit tors of the hill present a medium-grained pink granitic rock that look very similar to that of the summit of Hedgehope Hill.
Long Crag (not the same as Long Crags, near Housey Crag in the Harthope valley) reveals a very similar rock. Al-Hafdh classifies the former as ‘Hedgehope granodiorite’ and the latter as ‘Dunmoor granodiorite’. Actually, both in hand specimen and thin section, they are very similar in appearance and mineral content – an observation born out by Al-Hafdh’s own chemical analysis of the types.
We remain unconvinced that they can be separated into two types belonging to separate intrusions.
Al-Hafdh argues that the two are separated by a belt of coarse porphyritic granodiorite (‘Standrop’ variety). A tor containing the coarse rock certainly appears at NT 96890 17969 about half way between the summit and Long Crag, but the extent of peat bog over the hill precludes any way of establishing whether this is part of a wider belt separating the summit of Dunmoor Hill from Long Crag.
A further descent down the south side of the hill reveals again the junction between the pink medium grained porphyritic rock ‘(Dunmoor’/’Hedgehope’) and the dioritic ‘Marginal’ variety.
Cat Crag is definitely composed of the ‘Marginal’ variety.
We look for the hornfelsed andesite that geological map locate close to Long Crag, but we don’t find it.
Al-Hafdh, Linhope Spout and Linhope Burn
We have discovered Al-Hafdh’s 1985 PhD thesis on the alteration petrology of the Cheviot pluton and we’ve decided to chart and verify his rock types.
He claims to have found a series of chilled margins which establish the sequence of the various intrusions.
So, we make an excursion to the Linhope area where we find no convincing evidence for chilled margins but we do find the junction between Al-Hafdh’s Marginal and Dunmoor varieties just above Linhope Spout.
The ‘Felsite’ dyke marked on the 1” OS map at the top of Linhope Spout turns out to be a wider than normal version of the aplite veins which are frequent in the Cheviot pluton. This aplite dyke probably accounts for the hardness of the rock which has caused the waterfall feature.
About 100m up stream there is a slight cliff (about 5m high) at the junction between the pink granite and the marginal. This contains significant quartz veining, lending weight to the theory that hydrothermal activity took place along lines of weakness between the two types. Thin sections from this area reveal red crystals in the quartz which we first identified as rutile but now think more likely to be hematite.
Up stream to NT 94694 17249, we find a course-grained porphyritic rock in the streambed which Al-Hafdh classified as ‘Linhope’ granodiorite. We are not convinced by his differentiation of this from ‘Standrop’ granodiorite, and can not find evidence for a chilled margin between them.
Woolhope Crag and the Cheviot
We go to see if the theory of the darker rocks making tougher landscape features, would hold at Woolhope Crag (NT 92264 22169).
The answer was ambiguous. There is certainly plenty of dioritic rock there but there is also a pale fine-grained granophyric rock. We subsequently made our way up the north slopes of the Cheviot, and found plenty of scattered exposures which revealed more of the granophyric rock. We have classified this type on the map as ‘Evolved’ granite.
Descending from Cheviot summit on the main path for Langlee in the Harthope valley, we found distinct quartz veining with tourmaline content (approx. NT 918 209). There is the possibility that this quartz veining is the result of hydrothermal penetration on lines of weakness between different types of plutonic rock.
We need to pay another visit to investigate this.