Wexford Ireland

The effect of the General Glaciations on the drainage of the country was profound. We may presume that most of the rivers ceased to flow when the dry cold conditions became general. When melting of the ice- surface set in, streams were generated within and on the stagnating ice-sheets, and vast bodies of water flowed over their sloping fronts. The confluent ice had pushed from the north against the Leister Chain, sending lobes up the valleys that had been carved out in Cenozoic times, thrusting these lobes farther and farther southward against the local ice descending from the. hills, and thus establishing an ice-drainage from the plain land far into tlie recesses of the mountains. The shrinkage, of this ice-front was naturally accompanied by a shrinking of the local glaciers on the highland. The contents of the northern ice, represented largely by limestone pebbles, were then left along the foothills from Bray to Wexford, and in tlie upland valleys from Saggart to Pollaphuca on the west flank of the range. The gravels resulting from the rapid washing of this material remain as roughly stratified banks, traceable from the shore at Killiney up to heights of 1500 ft. at Killakee. Numerous fragments of marine shells, rocks from the coast of Co. Down, and the characteristic fine- grained granite, from Alisa Craig in the Clyde, indicate the deposits due to the Irish Sea ice.

In the county of Wexford (Accommodation, Wexford, Ireland), the. boulder-clay left by this ice is so highly calcareous that it has been used to ameliorate the clay-lands. The gravels overlying it, formed in the interglacial epoch of melting, arc styled from the same cause manure-gravels, though the clay below them has been far more generally employed.

Posted on April 17th, 2008 under Geology. Tags: general glaciation, Geography, geology wexford, integlacial epoch, leister chain, melting, pollphuca, saggart. Comments: 1