Siccar Point is a rocky promontory in the county of

Berwickshire Berwickshire ( gd, Siorrachd Bhearaig) is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area in south-eastern Scotland, on the English border. Berwickshire County Council existed from 1890 until 1975, when the area became part of ...

on the east coast of

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to th ...

. It is famous in the history of

geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ea ...

for

Hutton's Unconformity Hutton's Unconformity is a name given to various notable geological sites in Scotland identified by the 18th-century Scottish geologist James Hutton as places where the junction between two types of rock formations can be seen. This geological phe ...

found in 1788, which

James Hutton James Hutton (; 3 June O.S.172614 June 1726 New Style. – 26 March 1797) was a Scottish geologist, agriculturalist, chemical manufacturer, naturalist and physician. Often referred to as the father of modern geology, he played a key role ...

regarded as conclusive proof of his

uniformitarian Uniformitarianism, also known as the Doctrine of Uniformity or the Uniformitarian Principle, is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in our present-day scientific observations have always operated in the universe in ...

theory of geological development.

History

Siccar Point was the site of a

dun A dun is an ancient or medieval fort. In Ireland and Britain it is mainly a kind of hillfort and also a kind of Atlantic roundhouse. Etymology The term comes from Irish ''dún'' or Scottish Gaelic ''dùn'' (meaning "fort"), and is cognat ...

, or small

hill fort A hillfort is a type of earthwork used as a fortified refuge or defended settlement, located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typically European and of the Bronze Age or Iron Age. Some were used in the post- ...

, in the territory of the

ancient Britons The Britons ( *''Pritanī'', la, Britanni), also known as Celtic Britons or Ancient Britons, were people of Celtic language and culture who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age and into the Middle Ages, at which point the ...

. Siccar Point is now in the parish of

Cockburnspath Cockburnspath ( ; sco, Co’path) is a village in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland. It lies near the North Sea coast between Berwick-upon-Tweed and Edinburgh. It is at the eastern extremity of the Southern Upland Way a long-distance footpa ...

but was formerly in the parish of Old Cambus, from which the ancient parish church of St Helen's Chapel survives as a

ruin Ruins () are the remains of a civilization's architecture. The term refers to formerly intact structures that have fallen into a state of partial or total disrepair over time due to a variety of factors, such as lack of maintenance, deliberate ...

about one kilometre to the west of the point. The church is built in a Romanesque style, in a mixture of

Old Red Sandstone The Old Red Sandstone is an assemblage of rocks in the North Atlantic region largely of Devonian age. It extends in the east across Great Britain, Ireland and Norway, and in the west along the northeastern seaboard of North America. It also ext ...

believed to have been quarried from the nearby Greenheugh Bay and of the

greywacke Greywacke or graywacke ( German ''grauwacke'', signifying a grey, earthy rock) is a variety of sandstone generally characterized by its hardness, dark color, and poorly sorted angular grains of quartz, feldspar, and small rock fragments or li ...

rock also used in the drystone dyke forming the field boundaries. It is likely that the

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

village of Old Cambus was nearer to Siccar Point than the extant hamlet of Old Cambus. To the south of the point twentieth-century

quarry A quarry is a type of open-pit mining, open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock (geology), rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some juri ...

ing for

to be used as roadstone left a hollow named Old Cambus Quarry which is now occupied by a vegetable distribution warehouse complex.

Hutton's Unconformity

Siccar Point is notable in the history of

as a result of a boat trip in 1788 in which geologist

observed the

angular unconformity An unconformity is a buried erosional or non-depositional surface separating two rock masses or strata of different ages, indicating that sediment deposition was not continuous. In general, the older layer was exposed to erosion for an interval o ...

of the point. He wrote later that the evidence of the rocks provided conclusive proof of the

theory of geological development; that is, that the natural laws and processes which operate in the universe have never changed and apply everywhere. In respect of its great importance to the development of geoscience, this locality was included by the

International Union of Geological Sciences The International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) is an international non-governmental organization devoted to international cooperation in the field of geology. About The IUGS was founded in 1961 and is a Scientific Union member of the Inte ...

(IUGS) as the first of 100 'geological heritage sites' around the world in a listing published in October 2022.

References

External links

James Hutton's account of his visit to Siccar Point in BerwickshireJohn Playfair's historic remarks upon seeing Siccar Point
in vol. V, pt. III, 1805, ''Transactions of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

''.
Research Casting International hung on scaffolding off the cliffs at Siccar Pointpainting a large section of the rocks with thick liquid latex (photo)to fabricate an exhibit for the Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth
American Museum of Natural History. * {{Authority control Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Berwickshire and Roxburgh Geology of Scotland Historical geology Protected areas in the Scottish Borders Landforms of the Scottish Borders Headlands of Scotland First 100 IUGS Geological Heritage Sites

History

Hutton's Unconformity

See also

References

External links