The limestone pavements of Great Asby Scar, Cumbria, UK

Late Wolstonian and Ipswichian (MIS 6/5e) sediment fill in a limestone sinkhole, Askham Fell, northern England

“…Our sinkhole fill is capped by till, so Holocene local surface weathering and development of soil can be excluded as the source of the sandy units beneath the till, as the OSL dates confirm. The present study strongly supports the notion that karst surfaces in northern England developed before the Late Devensian (Goldie, 1996(Goldie, , 2006 as dissolution, due to surface runoff percolating down through the jointed limestone, opened joints forming a subsurface drainage system linking joints and opened bedding planes at least as early as MIS 5e, if not late in MIS 6; an older initiation of fissuring is also possible. Locally some joints will have widened sufficiently at the ground surface to allow conical depressions to occur in any overlying sediment to form sinkholes well before the Devensian Stage.…”

“…There has been a long debate as to the age of formation of karst features in northern England (e.g. Sweeting 1972;Goldie 1996Goldie , 2006 with larger examples, such as dolines (100s of metres scale), being regarded as pre-Devensian (Goldie, 2006;Waltham, 2013). In contrast, Goldie (2006) and Marker & Goldie (2007) noted that the smaller sinkholes (10s of metres scale) might be attributed to post-glacial (MIS 1) dissolution.…”

“…Locally some joints will have widened sufficiently at the ground surface to allow conical depressions to occur in any overlying sediment to form sinkholes well before the Devensian Stage. In other cases, where surface deposits are absent, joint widening would result in small, yet distinct, water sinks (runnel holes; Goldie, 1996) where fissures widened, but these surfaces lack the distinctive cone-shaped depressions of sinkholes. In either case, copious water flow is required (Ford & Williams, 1989) to dissolve the limestone, which usually cannot be supplied under the modern hydrological regimen (Goldie, 1996), and which might point to wetter and warmer sub-stages within MIS 5.…”

“…Clayton (1981) suggested that deepening of hollows beneath the drift may have occurred by subsoil dissolution during interglacial periods which clearly associates both fissure development and placement of some of the infill within a pre-Devensian period of time, for example the Ipswichian (Eemian) interglacial stage. Vincent (1985) and Goldie (1996) speculated that Devensian ice may not have been able to erode sinkhole fill, so some fill might be pre-Devensian.…”

Dating Ancient Field Walls in Karst Landscapes Using Differential Bedrock Lowering

“…Until recently, these studies and other similar observations in the United Kingdom (Goldie, 1996;Sweeting, 1966;Huddart, 2002) have provided a somewhat confusing range of proposed rates of surface lowering, but more recent studies (focused on Yorkshire but considering the Burren evidence as well) have accounted for the variation through a consideration of a number of potential factors: differing methods for measuring pedestals used by different researchers, differing rates of bedrock dissolution in subaerial environments compared to subsoil environments (and variations in soil chemistry in subsoil environments), variations in local topography and lithology, a preexisting surface of steps and plinths upon which the boulders were deposited, and the possible contribution of mechanical weathering mechanisms such as freeze-thaw cycles at some locales (Goldie, 2005;Parry, 2007). Out of these possibilities, Goldie (2005) dismisses mechanical weathering as probably not being a significant factor on the relatively hard limestone of the Burren, and Parry (2007) argues cogently against mechanical weathering even on other "weak" limestones.…”