Siccar Point
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Siccar Point is a rocky promontory in the county of Berwickshire on the east coast of Scotland. It is famous in the history of geology as a result of a boat trip in 1788 in which James Hutton, with James Hall and John Playfair, observed the angular unconformity which Hutton regarded as conclusive proof of the theory of geological evolution.
Siccar Point was the site of a Celtic hill fort, destroyed by quarrying operation, for greywacke to be used as roadstone, in the twentieth century. Siccar Point is now in the parish of Cockburnspath but was formerly in the parish of Old Cambus, from which the ancient parish church of St Helens survives as a ruin.
The church is built in a Romanesque style, in Old Red Sandstone believed to have been quarried from the nearby Greenheugh Bay. It is likely that the medieval village of Old Cambus was nearer to Siccar Point than the extant hamlet of Old Cambus.
[edit] External links
- James Hutton's account of his visit to Siccar Point in Berwickshire
- John Playfair's historic remarks upon seeing Siccar Point, in vol. V, pt. III, 1805, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
- Research Casting International hung on scaffolding off the cliffs at Siccar Point, painting 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.
- Map sources for Siccar Point
