Torver High Common is located about 1.5 miles to the south-west of Coniston.
There is a sequence of south dipping beds here, the rock types include:

Ordovician volcanic tuffs, rhyolites and breccias of the Borrowdale Volcanic Group.

Limey muds, silts and shales of the Coniston Limestone Group.

Oily, graptolite-bearing deep water shales of the Skellgill and Browgill Beds.

The classic flag sandstones of the Brathay Flags - with an excellent rock cleavage allowing
them to break into rectangular blocks with even surfaces.  (There are some disused quarries
on the Flags).  The Flags do not tend to outcrop, other than in the quarries and so their
presence is best identified by a change in vegetation cover from ferns over the
Browgill to yellow-green grass over the Brathay Flags.

The Brathay Quarry - one of a number of disused quarries in the Brathay Flagstones.
 

Silurian Sand and Gritstones of the Coniston Grits show upward fining turbidity
sequences of shelf/basin margin deposition.

Several NW-SE trending faults are present and can be clearly seen in most of the beds.
Most of the streams in the area tend to follow fault lines.

The southward dip of all beds probably represents the limb of a large-scale fold.
This and the rock cleavage in the Brathay Flags are evidence of plate collision during the
Caledonian Orogeny as a result of the closure of the Iapetus ocean.

As you can see from the above picture, one of the drawbacks of being out in the lake district
is that the weather sometimes gets a bit moody, but there are plenty of good pubs to shelter in.

Back to Top