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The Weald–Artois Anticline, or Wealden Anticline, is a large anticline, a geological structure running between the regions of the Weald in southern England and Artois in northern France. The fold formed during the Alpine orogeny , from the late Oligocene to middle Miocene as an uplifted form of the Weald basin through inversion of the basin.
Section across southern England showing the inverted nature of the Weald Basin. The Weald Basin (/ ˈ w iː l d /) is a major topographic feature of the area that is now southern England and northern France from the Triassic to the Late Cretaceous. Its uplift in the Late Cretaceous marked the formation of the Wealden Anticline.
The name "Weald" is derived from the Old English weald, meaning "forest" (cognate of German Wald, but unrelated to English "wood"). This comes from a Germanic root of the same meaning, and ultimately from Indo-European. Weald is specifically a West Saxon form; wold is the Anglian form of the word. [1]
For much of its history the Weald had been slowly subsiding basin, but the growth of the Alpine Chain to the south during the Cenozoic caused a reactivation of the Variscan basement basin-bounding faults, the rocks were arched into a broad anticline which stretched across the English Channel to Northern France, the Weald–Artois anticline.
The Greensand Ridge, formed of Lower Greensand, much of which is sandstone and where hardest is locally termed Bargate stone, is a remnant of the Weald dome, part of the great Weald-Artois Anticline that runs from south-east England into northern France. The Weald dome consists of a series of geological strata laid down in the Cretaceous that ...
It is a well-wooded zone almost entirely within the Caps et Marais d'Opale Regional Natural Park and is the east end of the Weald-Artois Anticline. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Its coast all faces west to the English Channel ( la Manche ), apart from a short north coast, including the small beach of Cap Gris-Nez which faces the Strait of Dover ("le Pas de Calais").
The predominant geology underlying the western Weald is the Weald Clay of the Wealden Series of the Lower Cretaceous, including in a few places Paludina limestones, used as a building stone. To the west there are extensive hills and ridges formed of Lower Greensand , including Blackdown , the highest point in Sussex.
The Wadhurst Clay Formation is a geological unit which forms part of the Wealden Group and the middle part of the now unofficial Hastings Beds.These geological units make up the core of the geology of the High Weald in the English counties of West Sussex, East Sussex and Kent.