Geological Survey history — Scotland

By 1854 the Geological Survey in England and Wales had been progressing since 1835 and for slightly longer in Ireland. It was at this time that Sir Henry de la Beche considered the extension of the survey to Scotland and he asked A C Ramsay to ‘break the ground’ in Scotland.

It was also at this time that consideration of the base mapping scale was hotly debated. In England and Wales, mapping proceeded on base maps on a scale of one inch to the mile, while in Ireland mapping was done in greater detail at the scale of six inches to the mile. Ramsay was intent on following the Irish method.

Beginnings

In August 1854, de la Beche, the local director for England and Wales, Jukes (director of the Irish Survey) and Ramsay met in Glengarriff at Bantry Bay in Ireland. It was here, after discussion, that the nature of the Geological Survey of Scotland was decided. The survey was to proceed at the scale of six inches to the mile.

Later in 1854, in the autumn, Ramsay began work in the Dunbar area, mapping the Carboniferous and the Old Red Sandstone. The following year, two other young geologists, H H Howell and Archibald Geikie, were sent up to continue the mapping. They mapped large tracts of the Lothians and Borders, culminating in the publication of the hand-coloured, one-inch-to-the-mile geological sheet 32 of Edinburgh. In about 1861, it was decided to map the superficial deposits, which in Scotland are mostly glacial drift, clays, sands and gravels laid down by the retreat of glaciers, and to show them on the one-inch-to-the-mile published sheets. This entailed remapping previous areas as well as new areas.

New identity

A new separate identity was created for the Geological Survey of Scotland in 1869. Roderick Impey Murchison, the then director general, set up a headquarters office in Edinburgh and Archibald Geikie was made the director.

For the first 20 years of its existence, mapping was focused on the southern and central parts of Scotland. Maps and memoirs of the coalfield areas were published as well as adjacent non-coalfield areas. ‘Clean copies’ of the six-inch field slips were made at the same scale for public consultation in the survey’s offices.

As the survey of the Central Belt and the adjacent areas matured, in 1875, attention turned towards the Highlands. Work initially started in the Old Red Sandstone on the southern margins of the Highlands but soon extended into the Moray Firth and Grampians area.

In 1882, Archibald Geikie became the director general of the whole Geological Survey and wanted to speed up and complete the primary survey of the UK. After a brief experiment changing to one-inch to one mile primary surveying, which proved to be very inadequate to convey the complex geology, the mapping team was increased. Despite this increase, the nature of the terrain, weather and complex geology resulted in slow progress.

Attention turns towards the Highlands

For many years, since around 1860, a major geological controversy had existed between Murchison and Prof Nicols of Aberdeen over the nature of the succession for the North-west Highlands. Charles Lapworth had also considered the problem. Geikie thought detailed mapping of the area would resolve the issue, so he pulled together a very experienced mapping team of Ben Peach and John Horne and later Clough, Hinxman, Cadell and Gunn. By 1884, they had resolved the issue and, together with Lapworth, they agreed that the upper rocks had been pushed over the lower rocks in a very low angle thrust fault.

Economic activity

From the early days of the survey in Scotland there had been work related to economic activity, especially the coal and oil shale resources. Indeed, the whole oil-shale industry really developed when Geikie, after his detailed mapping, showed James ‘Paraffin’ Young, who discovered how to distill paraffin from oil shale, the main outcrops of the oil shales in Scotland.

For much of the time there was a focus on mapping the coalfield areas and making the detailed ‘clean copies’ available for consultation. In the 1890s, Grant Wilson started to collect information with a view to revising the mapping of the coalfield areas as a result of increase demand for these resources.

Southern Uplands

Subsequent to the first and very rapid survey of the Southern Uplands, Charles Lapworth had developed the view that fossil graptolites provided the key to deciphering the stratigraphy of the folded and faulted Palaeozoic rocks.

Peach and Horne were called in to revise the mapping. So, between 1888 and 1898 they resurveyed the area, working in the winter months while summers were spent in the Highlands. Their two great memoirs were subsequently published: the Southern Uplands in 1888 and the North-west Highlands in 1907.

Timeline

Bibliography