THE GEOLOGY OF CHARLEY KNOLL

By Steve Pyrah

Seven hundred million years ago the Charley Knoll area was the bed of an ancient sea with volcanoes building up layer upon layer of ash and larva.  One hundred million years later massive earthquakes wrenched up the rock and compressed it laterally in a period of mountain building.  This created what Geologists now call an anticline, a massive trowel shaped fold in the Earth, the pointed end situated at Bradgate park and the wider part stretching out toward the north west. Six hundred million years of erosion has left us with a horseshoe shape of hills with the oldest rock at the centre where Charley Knoll now lies.