Crickley Hill combines wide views, old quarries and a remarkable record of Early and Middle Jurassic seas. The fossil-rich Pea Grit is especially important for small brachiopods, echinoids and coated grains. Explore this country park and nature reserve through observation and photography, using signed paths and current access information.
FIND FREQUENCY: ♦ – The Pea Grit has a rich published fauna, but weathering, vegetation and the difficulty of safely approaching exposures limit what visitors may see. Plan an observation visit.
CHILDREN: ♦ – The wider country park has family facilities and walking routes. Steep quarry margins and the old quarry descent are unsuitable places for children to explore.
ACCESS: ♦♦ – A car park, visitor hub, café and toilets serve the park. Quarry ledges and slopes are a separate accessibility problem; use designated paths and current signs.
TYPE – Disused limestone quarries and a natural scarp in a country park and nature reserve. Collecting requires the relevant manager’s permission.
DIRECTIONS
♦ Head for Crickley Hill Country Park and its signed car park and visitor hub. Check the National Highways A417 project information before travelling: the road moved to its permanent layout on 18 September 2026 and the Air Balloon roundabout was removed.
♦ Follow the current roadside signs rather than directions that still refer to the former roundabout. The reserve managers publish visitor and parking information; pay using the arrangements displayed on site and check the gate-closing time before walking.
♦ From the visitor hub, choose a signed route on the current site map towards the hill’s geological viewpoints. Stay on designated paths and use proper access points. Do not climb walls or descend the steep quarry margin to reach a fossil bed.
♦ The wider Cotswold Way has a temporary diversion via Ullenwood, Rushwood Kennels and Birdlip Radio Station during the A417 works, adding about 4 km. Through-walkers should consult the current diversion map; this does not mean the whole country park is closed.
♦ Guide quarry-area reference: 51.84474°N, 2.10333°W. This is not the car-park entrance or an instruction to stand at the scarp edge. The hill contains several distinct geological sections.
FOSSIL HUNTING
The Pea Grit is the principal fossil-bearing rock associated with this guide’s old quarry. It forms the upper part of the Crickley Member, rather than the whole member, and is packed with rounded, irregularly coated grains. Many fossils are small and easily overlooked among these “peas”. View safely accessible natural surfaces with a hand lens and photograph details in place. Obtain the relevant manager’s permission before removing material; public paths, a geology trail and parking payment do not authorise collecting.
The coated grains are oncoids, built up by microbial growth around a nucleus, often including shell debris. Their concentric or irregular coatings can be distinguished from the ribs, growth lines and hinge features of shells. The documented Pea Grit fauna includes brachiopods, bivalves, echinoids and gastropods, with many small forms. Terebratulid brachiopods, including shells recorded as Zeilleria, are an important part of the published assemblage.
Crickley is the type locality of the brachiopod Stroudithyris pisolithica, originally described under Terebratula. A modern study also records Curtirhynchia oolitica from its Pea Grit. A rounded shell is not enough for a species-level identification: clear photographs of its outline, ribbing, beak and both valves are needed. The detailed account keeps these verified occurrences separate from old names whose modern classification has not been established.
The locality has a distinguished history of echinoid discoveries. Wright described the rare form Pedina bakeri from a comparatively complete Crickley specimen and recorded Polycyphus deslongchampsii from the Pea Grit. These historical finds explain the site’s scientific importance, but complete sea urchins should not be expected on a casual walk. Broken test plates, spine fragments and other shell debris can be more difficult to recognise than the specimens illustrated in research papers.
The broader southern scarp exposes additional fossil-bearing levels. In the Lower Limestone below the Pea Grit, published sections record Pseudoglossothyris, Trichites, oysters and echinoids preserved in life position. Above it, the lower Cleeve Cloud Member contains a separate coral-bearing interval. Its reworked corals include Montlivaltia, Isastrea and Thamnasteria; the Crickley Coral Bed should not be relabelled as Pea Grit. Some muddier beds also preserve bryozoans.
Keep a wider photograph and location note with each close-up, distinguishing attached rock from loose debris. Avoid moving blocks or stepping onto scree beneath a face to improve a view. The quarry, north-west type section and generalised south-scarp log are not interchangeable, so do not attach a numbered bed to a photographed fossil unless the relationship is genuinely clear. Report a potentially important specimen to the reserve team with its position and photographs.
Significant discoveries
1851–1853 – Early geological descriptions
Brodie’s accounts form part of the early published study of the hill’s Lower Inferior Oolite exposures, preceding the more detailed measured sections and fossil work that followed.
1854 – New echinoids described from the Pea Grit
Wright described the rare echinoid Pedina bakeri from a single comparatively complete Crickley specimen, and recorded further Pea Grit echinoids, including Polycyphus deslongchampsii. These historical discoveries underpin the locality’s longstanding palaeontological importance.
1855 – Crickley fossils help define Hemipedina
Wright’s new genus Hemipedina included several forms from Crickley’s Pea Grit, among them H. bakeri, H. perforata, H. tetragramma and H. waterhousei. The paper reflects the changing classification of Jurassic sea urchins rather than a modern collecting list.
1855 – Central scarp measured on a Field Club visit
The 25 September excursion report recorded eight central-scarp units totalling 99 ft 8 in, including soil and rubble. It also described seven hard layers within part of Unit 7 and a separate coralline bed down dip. These observations preceded the later formal member scheme.
1860 – The Pea Grit divided into measured packages
Wright published a three-part section of the Crickley rocks then grouped as Pea-grit. His broad historical usage included much more than the narrower oncoidal interval now called Pea Grit.
1886 – A characteristic brachiopod named
Buckman named Terebratula pisolithica from a Crickley Pea Grit specimen. Later work placed it in Stroudithyris, and the original figured shell is treated as the holotype by monotypy.
1890 – The Crickley Coral Bed recognised
Lucy’s named Coral Bed drew attention to a distinct coral-bearing interval above the Pea Grit. Later interpretation places this detrital limestone in the lower Cleeve Cloud Member and recognises that much of its coral material was reworked.
1891 – The origin of the pea-like grains investigated
Wethered’s work identified microscopic structures within the coated grains. These helped establish their microbial origin: the conspicuous “peas” are carbonate-coated oncoids, rather than tiny shells or ordinary rounded pebbles.
1901 – Zeilleria circularis type linked to Crickley
The BGS collection holds holotype GSM47214 of Zeilleria circularis, citing Buckman’s 1901 Field Club paper. Its catalogue provenance records Crickley Pea Grit and the murchisonae zone, without a precise quarry position.
1935 – Land bequeathed to the National Trust
A 27.34-hectare holding at Crickley was bequeathed to the National Trust and declared inalienable. The Trust’s land is part of a wider site now cared for in partnership with Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust.
1974–1986 – SSSI designation and renotification
The site was first notified as an SSSI in 1974 and renotified in 1986. The protected geological interest includes the transition from the Lias into the Inferior Oolite, the Pea Grit and the overlying coral-bearing beds.
1978 – A detailed type-locality section
Mudge’s measured and sedimentological work documented the Crickley succession. The bed-numbered reference section lies on the north-west side of the hill, separate from the generalised section on the southern scarp.
1997 – Crickley Member formalised in the modern framework
The revised Cotswold classification combined the traditional Lower Limestone and Pea Grit within the Crickley Member of the Birdlip Limestone Formation. Crickley Hill provides the type locality.
2002 – Geological Conservation Review synthesis
The national review published a generalised local succession and explained the different environments recorded by the oncoidal Pea Grit and the mixed oolitic and muddy limestones above it.
2008 – A figured bryozoan colony
Taylor and Ernst illustrated a sheet-like Reptomultisparsa oolitica colony encrusting a cobble-sized intraclast from Crickley’s Aalenian Pea Grit, accession NHM D30000.
2014 – Burrowing bivalves studied across separate horizons
Angseesing’s pallial-sinus study included Crickley Hill specimens in its locality-by-horizon tables. The study linked the internal shell feature to the preservation of burrowing bivalves while retaining the source’s individual rock-unit records.
2015 – Oyster articulation compared
Separate Crickley Hill oyster samples contributed to Angseesing’s study of shell burial and preservation. The published counts distinguish articulated shells from single valves and retain their historical horizon labels.
2022 – Brachiopod comparison includes Crickley material
A quantitative study included Curtirhynchia oolitica from Crickley’s Pea Grit in a comparison of the two recognised species of the genus. Its documented sample reinforces the importance of exact locality and bed information.
GEOLOGY
Crickley Hill stands where resistant limestone caps the Cotswold escarpment above weaker Jurassic sediment. The familiar Pea Grit quarry shows part of the Birdlip Limestone Formation, but the wider hill also exposes underlying Lias rocks. The published southern-scarp section therefore records a transition from Early Jurassic sandy and muddy deposits into the shallow carbonate seas of the Middle Jurassic Aalenian. Several separate exposures contribute to the scientific picture.
The basal Leckhampton Member is a sandy, silty, iron-rich limestone, strongly disturbed by burrowing animals. Bivalves including Pholadomya occur in life position, and the brachiopod assemblage changes upwards. A concentration of reworked material at its base records a break in deposition over the older Lias. Above it, the Lower Limestone and Pea Grit together make up the Crickley Member; they are contrasting facies within one formal unit.
The Lower Limestone is predominantly ooidal and locally strongly burrowed. Its fossil assemblages include echinoids preserved where they lived. In the Pea Grit, larger carbonate-coated grains dominate. Their microbial coatings accumulated in shallow water and were intermittently moved or turned. The resulting oncoidal limestone looks coarser and more irregular than a well-sorted ooid grainstone, and it encloses a diverse fauna with many small shells.
The overlying Cleeve Cloud Member is not uniformly clean building-stone oolite here. The southern-scarp log records alternating ooid-rich beds, lime mudstone and flaggy limestone, with shell debris, oysters, crinoid material and bryozoans. The lower part includes the historically named Crickley Coral Bed, a detrital limestone containing reworked coral fragments. These changes reflect shifts in sediment supply, water energy and the character of the seabed rather than a single unchanging tropical sand bank.
The modern member definitions are narrower and more precise than some nineteenth-century names. Wright’s broad “Pea-grit” section, for example, cannot be equated directly with the 3.3 m oncoidal interval in the later generalised log. The north-west numbered type section is also distinct from the southern-scarp composite. Much later, quarrying, weathering and movement over the weaker Lias altered the landscape. These processes help explain the steep, unstable margins and why a published section is not a promise of a continuously accessible face today.
Detailed geology / stratigraphy
The modern account below is the generalised southern-scarp section near SO 930 160, as published in the Geological Conservation Review. It runs from younger to older rocks. The north-west type section near SO 929 163, the Pea Grit quarry and the southern scarp are separate exposures; their measurements must not be combined into one face. Historical sections and individual fossil records follow separately.
INFERIOR OOLITE GROUP
Birdlip Limestone Formation
Cleeve Cloud Member
Flaggy oolite (5.8 m)
Flaggy oolitic limestone. Recorded fossils and biological features include shell debris; pentacrinoid crinoid material; Liostrea; bryozoans. The five Cleeve Cloud packages total 11.0 m in this section; that is not a district-wide member thickness.
Rubbly calcilutite (1.9 m)
Rubbly lime mudstone; figured log also shows scattered ferruginous pisoids. Recorded fossils and biological features include shell debris; brachiopods; bryozoans. This rubbly lime mudstone overlies the separate 1.3 m massive package.
Massive bioturbated calcilutite (1.3 m)
Bioclastic lime mudstone, massive and burrowed. Recorded fossils and biological features include bryozoans in life position. Lower-energy facies within the mixed local Cleeve Cloud succession.
Oolite with basal ferruginous pisoids (1.2 m)
Oolitic limestone with iron-rich coated grains at base. Iron-rich coated grains mark the base of this separate ooidal package.
Basal oolite (0.8 m)
Oolitic limestone. This is the lowest of the five Cleeve Cloud packages above the Pea Grit in the generalised table.
Crickley Member
Pea Grit (3.3 m)
Well-bedded oncoidal/pisolitic limestone interleaved with oolite. Recorded fossils and biological features include small brachiopods, especially Zeilleria; bivalves; echinoids; gastropods; microbial structures including Girvanella in oncoids. This is the upper part of the Crickley Member. The oncoids are commonly flattened ovoids 5–7 mm across, with shell nuclei, laminated micritic coatings and asymmetry consistent with microbial accretion and occasional overturning. Figure 3.36 records a nest of terebratulids and burrowing at the base.
Lower Limestone: upper package (8.4 m)
Massive or thick-bedded ooid limestone, locally burrowed. Recorded fossils and biological features include Pseudoglossothyris; echinoids in life position; Liostrea and shell debris at base. The Lower Limestone totals 12.4 m in this generalised section. Figure 3.36 depicts especially intense burrowing in the lower half of this massive package, with large terebratulid brachiopods.
Lower Limestone: lower package (4.0 m)
Bioturbated oolitic limestone. Recorded fossils and biological features include Trichites; echinoids in life position; Pseudoglossothyris simplex at base. The brachiopod name Pseudoglossothyris follows the cited section.
Leckhampton Member
Bioturbated sandy limestone (3.4 m)
Silty/sandy, iron-rich yellow-brown muddy limestone with pervasive burrowing. Recorded fossils and biological features include Pholadomya and other infaunal bivalves in life position; Homoeorhynchia cynocephala in lower part; Rhynchonelloidea subangulata in upper part. The basal concentration called a bone bed by Ager probably includes reworked, phosphatised Lias material. The lower and upper brachiopod occurrences are distinct horizons within this package.
LIAS GROUP
Bridport Sand Formation
Black fossiliferous shale (1.25 m)
Black shale. The shale occupies the recorded local position above the ferruginous silt.
Ferruginous silt with doggers (seen to 2.0 m)
Thin-bedded micaceous ferruginous silt, with limestone nodules near its top. This is an exposed thickness, not the total thickness of the formation.
Crickley Coral Bed: separate overlapping interval
The narrative describes approximately 3.3 m of detrital limestone with reworked Montlivaltia, Isastrea and Thamnasteria in the lower Cleeve Cloud Member. This is Lucy’s historically named Coral Bed, above the Pea Grit. Its exact overlap with the five tabulated Cleeve Cloud packages is not resolved by the account, so its thickness is not added to their 11.0 m total.
North-west numbered type section
Mudge’s separate reference section near SO 929 163, just outside the southern-scarp GCR site, provides the type-section context used by BGS. The later framework assigns beds 1–12 there to the Leckhampton Member and beds 13–39 to the Crickley Member. Those numbers are not the eleven generalised packages described above.
Pea Grit brachiopods
Crickley is the type provenance of Stroudithyris pisolithica, originally Terebratula pisolithica Buckman, 1886. The 1988 revision identifies the original plate 3, figure 1 shell as the holotype by monotypy. Angseesing’s 2022 study also includes Curtirhynchia oolitica from Crickley Pea Grit; its Leckhampton C. extensa samples belong to a different locality and horizon.
Coated grains, seabed conditions and later ground movement
The Pea Grit includes many small fossils among microbial oncoids. The overlying mixed oolitic and muddy facies was historically called Fiddler’s Elbow Limestone, but that name does not make a measured log from the separate Fiddler’s Elbow locality part of this section. Limestone over weak Lias, later slope movement and quarrying together explain the broken scarp and variable exposures.
Crickley holotype in the BGS collection
The BGS-hosted GB3D catalogue identifies GSM47214 as the holotype of Zeilleria circularis, with locality Crickley, Cheltenham, Gloucester. Its comment gives Pea Grit and the murchisonae zone, citing Buckman (1901), Proceedings of the Cotteswold Naturalists’ Field Club 13, p. 9. The record supplies no grid reference or collector, so it does not locate the specimen in a particular quarry face. Its separate Buckman 1924 association is not used as a discovery or description date.
Wright’s 1860 historical section
Wright divided the rocks then called Pea-grit at Crickley into three broad packages. The combined 55 ft is not equivalent to the narrower 3.3 m Pea Grit facies in the modern account. The paper gives the hill locality without identifying the present guide quarry.
Unit A: Coarse oolitic limestone with abundant concretions, locally very hard/crystalline (25 ft)
One of Wright’s three historical Pea-grit divisions.
Unit B: Coarse pisolitic limestone with flattened round/oval concretions (20 ft)
One of Wright’s three historical Pea-grit divisions.
Unit C: Very ferruginous brown coarse-grained oolitic rock (10 ft)
One of Wright’s three historical Pea-grit divisions.
Historical fossil identifications
The following records retain their authors’ names and horizon descriptions. They document the history of the locality and are not all verified modern combinations. Differing old unit names and later revisions are kept separate.
Wright 1854, CNFC vol.2 pp.20–21: Pea Grit
Cidaris bouchardii. Direct locality record, current combination unverified.
Wright 1854, CNFC vol.2 pp.29–32: Pea Grit
Pedina bakeri. Wright described and figured a single small, comparatively complete Crickley specimen; later included in Hemipedina.
Wright 1854, CNFC vol.2 p.33: Pea Grit
Pedina etheridgii. The 1854 paper records Pedina etheridgii from Crickley Pea Grit, whereas the later Hemipedina etheridgii entry refers its cited specimen to Upper Lias at Ilminster.
Wright 1854, CNFC vol.2 pp.35–36: Pea Grit
Polycyphus deslongchampsii. Wright and Geological Survey collector Gibbs specimens from Crickley explicitly recorded; present genus validity not independently revised.
Wright 1855, CNFC vol.2 pp.124–125: Pea Grit
Hemipedina bakeri; Hemipedina perforata; Hemipedina tetragramma; Hemipedina waterhousei; Hemipedina bonei. The original printed account confirms all five names, including Hemipedina bonei; these remain historical combinations.
Figured bryozoan colony, 2008
Taylor and Ernst’s Figure 5E illustrates a sheet-like colony of Reptomultisparsa oolitica encrusting a cobble-sized intraclast from the Aalenian Pea Grit at Crickley. Its accession is NHM D30000. The caption identifies the locality and rock unit without a numbered quarry bed.
Burrowing bivalves examined in 2014
Angseesing’s study of pallial-sinus preservation tabulated fossils by locality and historical rock-unit name. The counts below describe that studied material, not abundance in a present-day exposure. A pallial sinus is the indentation in the internal muscle-attachment line associated with retractable siphons. The source distinguishes visibility on different valves; the totals given here do not allocate those incompletely resolved table columns. No particular quarry or numbered bed is assigned where the paper names only the hill.
Gresslya abducta, 2014 Table 1
The recorded Crickley Hill material comprises 2 from Lower Limestone.
Pholadomya lirata, 2014 Table 2
The recorded Crickley Hill material comprises 1 from Pea Grit.
Pleuromya uniformis, 2014 Table 5
The recorded Crickley Hill material comprises 1 from Lower Limestone.
Oyster preservation samples examined in 2015
Angseesing’s Tables 5–6 separately counted articulated shells and isolated valves. For Catinula crickleyensis from Pea Grit, the Crickley Hill sample had 4 articulated shells and 18 single valves, with the author’s published articulation value 18.18%. For Actinostreon costata from Pea Grit, the Crickley Hill sample had 0 articulated shells and 9 single valves, with the author’s published articulation value 0%. These are separate samples, with no left/right allocation made here for the single valves; adding valves and articulated shells does not give a count of original living animals. Historical unit names are retained, and the study does not identify a particular quarry face.
Crickley Pea Grit limid samples studied in 2020
Angseesing’s study of shell preservation recorded Pseudolimea duplicata from the Pea Grit at Crickley as six isolated left valves, seven isolated right valves and one specimen with both valves present. The corresponding P. interstincta sample comprised 17 left valves and ten right valves, with no paired-valve specimen. These are the study’s sample counts; they do not measure the total abundance of either species at Crickley. Reference: Angseesing, J. (2020), “Aspects of shell preservation in the British Middle Jurassic Limids Limatula and Pseudolimea”, Proceedings of the Cotteswold Naturalists’ Field Club 48(II), 243–251, Table 1.
Brachiopod samples examined in 2022
Angseesing’s comparison of Curtirhynchia included 144 C. oolitica shells from Crickley Hill Pea Grit (mean width 11.2 mm; mean total rib count 8.8). The study supported separating the generally larger and more strongly ribbed C. extensa from C. oolitica. These sample measurements do not define a numbered local bed.
Separate three-hill comparison in 2006
Angseesing’s study of Stroudithyris preservation included 34 articulated S. pisolithica shells from Pea Grit material pooled across Cleeve Hill, Leckhampton Hill and Crickley Hill. This is a three-locality comparison; the total and its encruster observations cannot be assigned wholly to Crickley Hill.
Shell-study references
Taylor, P. D. and Ernst, A. (2008), “Bryozoans in transition: The depauperate and patchy Jurassic biota”, Figure 5; author paper and figure caption.
Angseesing, J. P. A. (2006), “Preservation of Stroudithyris in the Middle Jurassic of the Cotswold Hills”, Proceedings of the Cotteswold Naturalists’ Field Club 43 (III), 227–233.
Angseesing (2014), “Pallial sinus preservation in Jurassic burrowing bivalves”, ibid. 46 (II), 172–187.
Angseesing (2015), “Further evidence that brachiopod crushing is associated with rate of shell burial”, ibid. 46 (III), p. 288 onwards.
Angseesing (2022), comparison of the two species of Curtirhynchia.
Central-scarp section recorded on 25 September 1855
The Field Club excursion report describes a section near the centre of the Crickley scarp, below the feature it called the Roman encampment. Its eight numbered units run downwards from soil and rubble into limestone. The original feet-and-inches measurements total 99 ft 8 in. This is a separate historical section, not the modern north-west numbered type log or the generalised southern-scarp table.
1855 Unit 1: Soil (0 ft 8 in)
1855 Unit 2: Rubbly oolite/debris (4 ft 0 in)
1855 Unit 3: Red incoherent calcareous sand (6 ft 0 in)
1855 Unit 4: Hard freestone in large building-stone blocks (15 ft 0 in)
1855 Unit 5: Pisolite with slight admixture of oolite ragstone (5 ft 0 in)
1855 Unit 6: Freestone including pisolite and separated by pisolitic seams (9 ft 0 in)
1855 Unit 7: Hard oolitic block, partly strongly indurated pisolite (35 ft 0 in)
1855 Unit 8: Sandy oolite with large ragstone blocks, locally highly pisolitic at outcrop (25 ft 0 in)
Internal layers and fossils in historical Unit 7
Within its 35 ft thickness, a 20 ft interval comprised seven hard layers separated by thin seams of oolitic sand. Some layers were as much as 3 ft 6 in thick, but the report does not supply seven individual measurements. The stone showed smooth faces described by quarrymen as “lissens”, and the blocks included large Lima, Gervillia and Belemnites. The report described nearly 90 ft of more or less pisolitic rock at this part of the scarp.
Separate coralline-bed observation
Following the slight dip below the historical Air Balloon public house, the same report described an overlying coralline bed which had been mistaken for Oolitic Marl. This is an unmeasured, geographically separate observation; it is not an extra numbered unit or a modern route instruction.
References
Sumbler, M. G. (2002), “Crickley Hill”, in Cox and Sumbler, British Middle Jurassic Stratigraphy, Geological Conservation Review 26. Modern measured descriptions are adapted from this JNCC account under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Wright, T. (1860), “On the subdivision of the Inferior Oolite in the south of England, compared with the equivalent beds of that formation on the Yorkshire coast”, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 16, 1–48, particularly pp. 7–8; paper read 6 April 1859.
Barron, A. J. M., Lott, G. K. and Riding, J. B. (2012), Stratigraphical framework for the Middle Jurassic strata of Great Britain and the adjoining continental shelf, BGS RR/11/06.
Wright’s 1854 and 1855 echinoid papers and the separate Field Club excursion reports for 1855–1856, printed in Proceedings of the Cotteswold Naturalists’ Field Club 2.
Alméras and colleagues (2013), modern rhynchonellid brachiopod revision; Alméras and Moulan (1988), terebratulid revision.
Angseesing (2022), comparison of the two species of Curtirhynchia.
Geological Conservation Review account and reference list
SAFETY
The quarry margins include steep drops, loose scree and unstable limestone. Keep away from both the edge and the foot of faces. Do not climb over walls or attempt the old steep descent; use signed paths and designated access points.
Wet limestone and muddy slopes can be very slippery. Keep children away from the quarry edges, and choose a wider-park route if a geological viewpoint cannot be reached safely. There is no need to approach a face to enjoy the hill’s geology.
Follow current A417 works signs and path diversions. Check the car-park closing time, as gates are locked. Take suitable clothing, water, a charged phone and a map, and follow the managers’ guidance around grazing cattle and wildlife.
EQUIPMENT
Bring sturdy walking footwear, a map, weatherproof layers and drinking water. A camera, hand lens and photographic scale suit an observation visit. Leave picks, hammers and digging tools behind unless a particular activity has been expressly authorised by the relevant manager.
CLEANING AND TREATING
Leave fossils and rock surfaces undisturbed on the reserve. Do not scrape away coatings, loosen shells or brush soil from an exposure to obtain a clearer photograph. Natural weathering and angled light often reveal the most useful detail.
Keep locality and rock-context notes with your photographs. Where material has been removed under specific permission, ask for preparation advice before cleaning: small brachiopods, echinoid plates and shell moulds can be damaged by vigorous brushing or splitting. Do not use acids or powered tools on an unidentified specimen.
IDENTIFY YOUR FINDS
Need help identifying a fossil? Share clear photos, where you found it and its size with the community.
FURTHER READING
Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust: Crickley Hill visitor information
National Trust: Crickley Hill
National Highways: current A417 route and works information
Official Cotswold Way diversion map
Geological Conservation Review: Crickley Hill
BGS Lexicon: Crickley Member
National Trust byelaws
ACCESS RIGHTS
Crickley Hill is managed in partnership by Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust and the National Trust. Public visiting is welcomed, with parking charges and seasonal gate times published by the managers. Follow current signs, closures and the applicable dog-control guidance, especially around cattle.
The National Trust’s byelaws restrict unauthorised digging and taking substances from Trust property. The Trust’s 2021 planning representation also described tenancy rights over parts of the wider site. That historical account does not establish the present boundary of those rules, and ownership labels alone are insufficient. Ask the relevant manager about any proposed fossil removal from the specific ground; this guide recommends observation and photography.
The Crickley Hill and Barrow Wake SSSI protects important geology and habitats. Its wider boundary includes more than the quarry described here. Designation, public access and old geological field visits do not grant collecting permission. Scientific surveys, sampling or clearance require the relevant prior arrangements.
It is important to follow our ‘Code of Conduct’ when collecting fossils or visiting any site. Please also read our ‘Terms and Conditions‘
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