Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire Volume 8 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1856 Excerpt: ... the heaving up of the " huge mass of Pendle," the Roman occupation of England is but a thing of yesterday, as the merest tyro in Geology at the present day will easily understand. Mr. Baines afterwards altered his opinion and contended that the presence of the red rock in the bed of the river disproved the assumption of the elder Whitaker. The Rev. John Clay, however, in his lectures on the Ribble, strongly maintained that Ribchester had been a seaport, and that the bed of the river had been elevated by an earthquake, since the period of the Roman occupation. The discovery of the remains in the centre of the alluvial deposit between the Ribble and the Darwen, opposite the ford over the former, furnishes better evidence of the condition of the valley with regard to tidal action, than a thousand speculations, however ingenious. The circumstance that the red rock crops out at an angle, and that the immense depth of debris in the valley is stratified horizontally, is satisfactory proof that the latter has been deposited since the elevation of the former, at whatever period that event occurred. The discovery at Walton may be said fairly to set this question at rest; for if the tide had, at the time alluded to, risen six feet higher, or, what would amount to precisely the same thing, had the valley of the Ribble been depressed but six feet, the station could not have existed. Indeed, it must have required then, as now, to be well embanked, to protect it from the ravages of the winter floods, providing the river current and the tidal flow were no greater than at the present time. In all human probability the valley of the Ribble presents nearly the same general features as when the Roman legions left the country. Its superficial aspect may have changed;...