The Thames Valley

Abstract

IN the “Physical Geology and Geography of Great Britain”, Sir A. Ramsay expressed some interesting speculation about the relation formerly existing between the valleys of the Thames and the Severn. According to his view, the Severn Valley was the older, being “one of the oldest in the lowlands of England”. He considered that the secondary strata to the south-east of that river originally drained into it, and that subsequent subsidence altered their inclination to an eastward slope, causing the waters to cut a new channel through the Oolites and Chalk towards the east, the direction in which the Thames flows at present. This view, I believe, has never been favourably entertained by other geologists, owing to the absence of corroborative evidence of such a change in the dip of the beds as Ramsay postulated.