Betteshanger Park, formerly Fowlmead, preserves a fossil-hunting area in material from the Kent coalfield. Its Carboniferous plant fossils can be explored through the park’s authorised fossil activities.
FIND FREQUENCY: ♦♦♦♦♦ – in the original account — Plant impressions can be productive, but availability depends on the material and authorised session.
CHILDREN: ♦♦♦♦ – Suitable family activities are offered by the operator; supervise children on loose or steep spoil and follow the leader’s instructions.
ACCESS: ♦♦♦♦♦ – Use the park entrance and car park; confirm fossil-session arrangements before travelling. The park has visitor facilities; check current café and toilet opening before your visit.
TYPE: – Mixed colliery spoil, not an in-situ rock face or a freely accessible excavation site.
DIRECTIONS
♦ Betteshanger Park is signed from the A258 Sandwich Road at Sholden, near Deal. The operator’s address uses CT14 0BF.
♦ Use the park car park and follow the current payment instructions. The operator describes ANPR parking with payment at on-site kiosks before departure.
♦ Book or confirm an authorised fossil-hunting activity with the park. Private group sessions and selected drop-in events are weather-dependent; ordinary park admission does not grant permission to dig the spoil.
♦ Ref: 51.235361°N, 1.371746°E
♦ The original guide described the collecting area as about five minutes’ walk from the car park. The managed activity area and its access can change, so follow the current meeting-point or staff instructions.
FOSSIL HUNTING
Betteshanger is a place to look for the vegetation of the Carboniferous coal forests in rock brought up by the former colliery. The fossil-bearing material is retained spoil rather than an undisturbed outcrop, so start with the loose pieces provided or exposed in the collecting area chosen by the session leader. Examine flat surfaces and existing splits before deciding that a rock is barren: a small stem or leaflet can be more informative than a large block of coal.
The original local record includes Calamites, Lepidodendron and Neuropteris. These are useful field names for particular plant remains, not necessarily three complete plants preserved side by side. Look for a repeating biological pattern rather than colour alone. Dark smears, iron staining and random cracks can resemble fossils until the surface is viewed closely or turned in the light. A hand lens helps with leaf veins and small surface details.
Calamites was a tree-sized relative of living horsetails. Its stem remains show close, lengthwise ribs interrupted by more widely spaced crosswise joints, or nodes. Fragments can be flattened impressions or more rounded casts, so a fossil need not look like a complete cylindrical trunk. Try to retain a length containing a node: parallel lines on their own are less useful for identification than the combination of ribs and a joint.
The familiar scale-like pattern of Lepidodendron comes from the closely packed leaf cushions of a tree-sized clubmoss relative. Search for repeated diamond-shaped outlines across the surface, rather than a single vaguely diamond-shaped mark. Weathering and the level at which the stem surface is preserved affect the appearance, so a worn piece may be identifiable only as a lycopsid stem. Keep enough surrounding rock to show how the pattern repeats.
Frond impressions labelled Neuropteris belong to seed plants with fern-like foliage. Well-preserved leaflets can show a rounded or heart-shaped base, a central vein and fine branching side veins. A series of leaflets attached to an axis is generally more useful than an isolated black patch. Not every fern-like impression is Neuropteris, and detailed identification may require features that a weathered fragment does not preserve. If a split has produced matching positive and negative surfaces, keep the two parts together with the same label.
Geoconservation Kent records that the plant assemblages provide evidence of forest, river-bank and flood-deposition environments. The mix of leaves, stems and other fragments is therefore part of the interest: compare their preservation and the texture of the rock carrying them. Because the spoil has been moved and mixed, do not assign a find to a particular coal seam from its position on the mound. Record “Betteshanger colliery spoil”, the date and any source information supplied by the leader; photograph a promising piece before further work.
Rare arthropod remains attributed to Arthropleura have also been recorded, but these are exceptional discoveries rather than an expectation for a normal visit. An unfamiliar segmented or ornamented fragment is worth showing to the leader before trying to expose more of it. The current park offers guided fossil sessions, with equipment and instruction supplied, private-group bookings and selected drop-in dates. Check the current arrangements before travelling, use tools only as instructed and confirm which finds may be taken home. Do not extend the search into closed areas or dig independently elsewhere in the park.
A chronological record of geological research and significant milestones at Betteshanger.
1924 – Shaft sinking began
Pearson and Dorman Long began sinking the first Betteshanger shaft. Mining brought the concealed Carboniferous succession to the surface and created the spoil resource later used for geological education.
1989 – Colliery closed
Betteshanger, the last operating Kent colliery, closed. The surviving spoil retained evidence of the coalfield’s fossil plants and depositional environments after underground working ended.
2007 – Country park opened with a fossil resource
Fowlmead Country Park opened in May following redevelopment of the tip. Geoconservation work retained a collecting area and rock store rather than allowing the educational fossil resource to disappear beneath landscaping.
2009 – Collecting material renewed
A digger exposed fresh fossil-bearing spoil in late May, and guided educational visits introduced young collectors to the retained resource. This was an actively managed collecting area, with fresh material made available as older surfaces became exhausted.
References
Betteshanger Park, fossil hunting and visitor information
Betteshanger Park fossil-hunting risk assessment, 2021
Geoconservation Kent, Betteshanger Sustainable Parks with Relic Cliff
Shephard-Thorn (1988), Geology of the country around Ramsgate and Dover, sheets 274 and 290
Waters and others (2009), Carboniferous lithostratigraphical framework of southern Great Britain
Kent County Council Historic Environment Record, Betteshanger Colliery TR 35 SW 60
Natural History Museum, What is a fossil? specimen fragility and pyrite decay
UKRIGS newsletter volume 7 number 1, Fowlmead fossil-site development
BGS Lexicon, Warwickshire Group
Existing UK Fossils Betteshanger guide
GEOLOGY
Betteshanger, formerly Fowlmead, presents the rocks of a buried late Carboniferous landscape at the surface because they were brought up during coal mining. The collecting material is colliery spoil, subsequently moved and incorporated into the park. Its present layers and slopes are therefore modern arrangements of older rocks, rather than an undisturbed geological succession that can be read from bottom to top.
The original sediments accumulated in coal-swamp, river and floodplain environments. Mudstones and siltstones contrast with coarser sandstones and coal, recording different parts of that lowland setting. Plant-bearing slabs preserve impressions and compressions of vegetation; repeated stems, bark patterns and frond shapes account for the collecting interest in material historically identified as Calamites, Lepidodendron and Neuropteris. These commonly name preserved plant organs or forms, not three complete plant species growing together in one exposed bed.
Modern BGS terminology places the lower part of the Kent succession in the South Wales Coal Measures Group, despite that geographical name. Above the top of Kent No. 6 seam, the higher succession belongs to the Warwickshire Group and includes thick Pennant-type sandstones, mudstones and coals. “Pennant-type” describes the sandstone character here; it does not establish a separate Kent Pennant Sandstone Formation. These underground relationships explain possible spoil sources rather than a visible contact in the park.
Provenance is less precise than the regional geology. The old collecting guide attributes material to Kent Nos. 5 and 7, whereas the geoconservation account refers to Nos. 6 and 7. Mixing and redistribution mean that neither a slab’s position on the mound nor its plant impression alone resolves that difference. A specimen with an independently recorded seam source is more informative than one assigned to a seam simply because it was collected beside another fossil.
Detailed geology and stratigraphy of Betteshanger.
Reworked Carboniferous colliery spoil
The fossils occur in rock brought up from the concealed Kent Coalfield and later retained within the landscaped park. Spoil is mixed and redistributed, so its present height or position does not establish original bed order. The underground succession explains the origin of the material, while the collecting mound is a modern deposit.
SOUTH WALES COAL MEASURES GROUP
This formal name is applied to the lower part of the Kent Coalfield succession, despite its geographical wording. Mudstones, siltstones, sandstones, coals and fossil soils record changing lowland environments; occasional marine incursions produced marine bands. The park’s mixed spoil can contain rocks associated with more than one worked seam.
South Wales Middle Coal Measures Formation
Kent No. 7 was worked at Betteshanger and lies within the middle part of the traditional Coal Measures succession. Mudstones and siltstones dominate this part of the field, with variable coal seams and thinner sandstones. Its presence in historical spoil reports does not make every plant-bearing slab a Kent No. 7 roof rock.
Kent No. 7 seam and associated measures
The district memoir records past working of Kent No. 7 at Betteshanger. The seam averaged a little over a metre where worked in the cited collieries, but that underground figure is not the thickness of a visible bed in today’s spoil. Geoconservation Kent associates the retained material with Kent Nos. 6 and 7.
South Wales Upper Coal Measures Formation
In the modern framework the interval above the Cambriense-equivalent marine bands extends up to the top of Kent No. 6. This differs from the old use of Upper Coal Measures for the entire higher sandstone-rich succession. The distinction matters when assigning a formal name to spoil reportedly associated with No. 6.
Kent No. 6 seam and the higher succession boundary
Kent No. 6 was a major worked seam at Betteshanger. Its top provides the modern boundary used between the South Wales Upper Coal Measures Formation and the overlying Warwickshire Group in Kent. Published biostratigraphic interpretations identify a gap around this transition; the spoil mound itself does not expose that boundary in order.
WARWICKSHIRE GROUP
The higher Kent succession is assigned to the Warwickshire Group without a local formation subdivision. It contains thick Pennant-type sandstones, mudstones and coal seams and is Asturian in age in this coalfield. Unlike some Midlands developments of the group, the Kent succession lacks the characteristic red-bed facies. Pennant-type is used here to describe the sandstone facies; no separate Pennant Sandstone Formation is recognised in Kent.
Kent No. 5 and spoil provenance
The older collecting guide reports material attributed to Kent No. 5, alongside some Kent No. 7. That observation differs from the Kent geoconservation account’s attribution to Nos. 6 and 7. Both descriptions concern a reworked and replenished resource. A reliable seam assignment for an individual specimen requires an independently recorded source, not its position on the present collecting surface.
References
Geoconservation Kent, Betteshanger Sustainable Parks with Relic Cliff
Shephard-Thorn (1988), Geology of the country around Ramsgate and Dover, sheets 274 and 290
Waters and others (2009), Carboniferous lithostratigraphical framework of southern Great Britain
Existing UK Fossils Betteshanger guide
BGS Lexicon, Warwickshire Group
SAFETY
Loose spoil can shift, sharp shale can cut, and steep faces may be unstable. Stay in the area opened for the activity and follow staff instructions.
Weather can cancel or alter sessions. Carry suitable footwear and clothing and do not enter fenced, closed or operational areas.
The exposed spoil can be hot in sunshine; carry water, a hat and sun protection.
EQUIPMENT
Wear sturdy shoes and clothing suitable for loose spoil. Bring padding and labels for fragile plant-bearing slabs. Use only the tools and protective equipment permitted or supplied by the session leader.
CLEANING AND TREATING
Plant compressions and impressions may lie on very thin shale laminae. Support the whole slab, retain its counterpart if one is found during an authorised session, and label both together. Avoid scrubbing carbon films, prolonged soaking of fissile mudstone, or splitting a specimen merely to make it smaller. Begin with gentle dry cleaning and seek advice for unstable slabs. Pyritic material needs controlled dry storage and periodic inspection; acidic-smelling powder or crumbling warrants specialist conservation advice. Do not coat the collection indiscriminately with varnish.
IDENTIFY YOUR FINDS
Need help identifying a fossil? Share clear photos, where you found it and its size with the community.
FURTHER READING
Geoconservation Kent, Betteshanger Sustainable Parks with Relic Cliff
Waters and others (2009), Carboniferous lithostratigraphical framework of southern Great Britain
Shephard-Thorn (1988), Geology of the country around Ramsgate and Dover, sheets 274 and 290
BGS Lexicon, Warwickshire Group
Kent County Council Historic Environment Record, Betteshanger Colliery TR 35 SW 60
UKRIGS newsletter volume 7 number 1, Fowlmead fossil-site development
Betteshanger Park, fossil hunting and visitor information
ACCESS RIGHTS
This is a privately managed park with a retained geological collecting resource. Arrange a fossil-hunting session or obtain explicit permission from the operator before collecting or digging. Follow staff instructions about the working area, tools, protective equipment and retained finds. Do not enter closed or operational parts of the spoil.
It is important to follow our ‘Code of Conduct’ when collecting fossils or visiting any site. Please also read our ‘Terms and Conditions’.
LINKS
♦ Fossil Discussions
♦ Fossil Articles
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♦ Join Fossil Hunts
♦ UK Fossils Network
