Corals in Carboniferous limestone are the main attraction at Lydstep, where weathered boulders and sea-washed stones reveal the remains of an ancient tropical sea. The small cove below the headland is especially rewarding for observing fossils, while steeply tilted beds and younger limestone breccias add to the geological interest.
FIND FREQUENCY: ♦♦♦♦♦ – Corals can be conspicuous on suitable limestone surfaces; finding a fossil to photograph does not mean it can be removed.
CHILDREN: ♦♦♦♦♦ – A supervised fossil-spotting visit is possible for children able to manage the steps and uneven shore. Keep away from cliff bases, overhangs and the water’s edge.
ACCESS: ♦♦♦ – A headland path leads from the National Trust car park to a flight of 100 steps. The rocky shore is unsuitable for pushchairs or visitors unable to manage a steep return climb.
TYPE: – Carboniferous limestone cliffs, boulders and pebbles, with younger breccia bodies around the headland.
DIRECTIONS
♦ From the A4139 between Pembroke and Tenby, take the lane south from Lydstep village towards Lydstep Head. Follow the headland car-park signs rather than entering the holiday park.
♦ The National Trust gives the car-park grid reference as SS087977 and the approach postcode as SA70 7SE. Use the grid reference to locate the headland parking area; check local signs for current parking arrangements.
♦ For the cove and caverns, bear right from the car park when heading towards the sea, then follow the path to the 100 steps down to the beach. The caverns are accessible only at low tide. Return by the steps with ample time before the tide rises.
♦ Guide location reference: 51.64699°N, 4.76185°W. The fossil-spotting cove is on the western side of the headland; Lydstep Quarry and the Haven shore discussed in the geology are separate exposures.
FOSSIL HUNTING
Begin by examining the naturally weathered limestone surfaces in the cove. Corals are the most conspicuous fossils: look for repeated small circular or polygonal sections with fine lines radiating towards their centres, or bundles of narrow tubes cut lengthways by the rock surface. Different sections through the same colony can look very different. Photograph the overall colony and a close view with a scale, without chipping the rock to reveal more.
Sea-washed pebbles and accessible boulder surfaces can also show crinoid fragments. These may appear as small discs, short stacks of segments or pale fragments within the darker limestone. Brachiopod shell sections and occasional coiled shells provide variety, but a curved or spiral outline alone is not enough to distinguish a gastropod from a coiled cephalopod. Some photographed material remains uncertain, so avoid assigning a species from a partial outline.
The rock itself helps explain the search. Fossils are commonly embedded firmly in limestone, so weathering and abrasion reveal cross-sections rather than complete loose specimens. On wet surfaces the contrast between shell or coral skeleton and surrounding rock can become clearer. Examine stones from a safe standing position and move around a boulder to compare naturally exposed faces; do not overturn large blocks or work beneath an overhang.
Historic records give more detailed fossil names for particular parts of the headland. Lithostrotion was recorded through the sparsely fossiliferous beds forming Whitesheet Rock and Lydstep Point, although its lowest occurrence was uncertain. The richer lists of Seminula ficoides, Lithostrotion martini, Productus and gastropods belong to the separate Lydstep Quarry section. They help explain the wider limestone succession, but should not be read as a guaranteed checklist for the small western cove. These are historical identifications, not newly verified modern species determinations.
Keep your observations tied to their actual position. A loose limestone pebble cannot normally be assigned to one of the quarry’s numbered beds just from its fossil content, and a fossil-bearing fragment inside a younger breccia retains the age of the older limestone from which it broke. Record whether a photograph shows bedrock, a loose beach stone or a clast in breccia. Leave fossils in place unless the landowner has explicitly permitted removal; the access section explains how to approach a collecting visit.
Significant discoveries and geological research around Lydstep Headland.
1912 – Quarry bryozoans studied
G. W. Lee examined two Geological Survey specimens from Lydstep Quarry, comparing their microscopic structure with other Carboniferous bryozoans. He left their species identification open, preserving a useful specimen-based record from the quarry without naming a new Lydstep species.
1921 – Limestone sections and fossil horizons documented
E. E. L. Dixon published detailed accounts of Lydstep Quarry, the Haven shore, Whitesheet and the Point, distinguishing fossiliferous limestone horizons and recording their thicknesses. His descriptions remain valuable for comparing exposures around the headland, although the fossil-zone terminology differs from the modern formation scheme.
2014 – Separate breccia bodies mapped and reinterpreted
Nigel Woodcock, A. V. M. Miller and C. D. Woodhouse distinguished the Whitesheet and Lydstep Point breccias and mapped their relationship to steep bedding and later cross faults. They interpreted the structures as products of extension and collapse, separating the history of the limestone host rock from the much younger disruption and infill.
GEOLOGY
Lydstep’s grey limestone began as sediment in a Carboniferous sea. Shells, corals, crinoid debris, lime mud and locally abundant rounded carbonate grains contributed to the rock. The headland exposes part of the Pembroke Limestone Group, with High Tor Limestone, Cornelly Oolite and Stormy Limestone distinguished in published geological mapping of the area. These are Visean rocks; the different formations and fossil horizons should not be compressed into one stage or assigned the age range of the entire group.
Changes in the original marine environment produced contrasting beds. Skeletal limestone contains the remains of marine animals, while oolitic limestone is built largely from small coated carbonate grains. Finer-grained and mixed limestones record quieter or very shallow-water conditions within the regional succession. These differences help explain why one weathered surface may be crowded with fossils and another nearby face yields few recognisable specimens. The detailed historic logs from the quarry and Haven provide additional evidence, but they are not a measured section through the western visitor cove.
The beds were subsequently folded and steeply tilted. Later deformation opened space within the limestone, and broken angular fragments accumulated as breccia. Published mapping shows distinct breccia bodies at Whitesheet on the west and Lydstep Point on the east, rather than one continuous sheet running through the headland. Sharp margins broadly parallel to bedding, locally bent wall rocks and the arrangement of the fragments led researchers to favour opening and collapse rather than simple sliding along bedding.
The timing of this younger disruption is less precise than the age of the fossil-bearing limestone. A latest Triassic, Rhaetian phase was proposed from regional comparisons, but the Lydstep infill was not directly dated in that study. Limestone fragments within the breccia may therefore contain Carboniferous fossils even though the breaking, movement and cementation happened much later. Modern sea caves and their deposits are another part of the landscape’s history and should not be confused automatically with those older breccia bodies.
The limestone formations, local historic bed logs and younger breccia bodies around Lydstep Headland.
Scope of the sections. The practical route in this guide reaches the western cove below the headland. The geological account distinguishes that coast, Whitesheet Rock, the eastern Point, Lydstep Quarry and the south side of Lydstep Haven. Published formation boundaries around the headland are approximate where inland exposure is poor. The historic logs below retain their original locality and numbering; they are not a continuous measured succession through the visitor cove.
PEMBROKE LIMESTONE GROUP
The marine Carboniferous limestone succession provides the fossil-bearing host rock. Around the headland, the published modern framework includes High Tor Limestone to the south, Cornelly Oolite through the headland and Stormy Limestone farther north towards the quarry. These Visean units represent only part of the much broader group. No precise whole-group numerical age range is assigned to an individual exposure here.
High Tor Limestone Formation
The formation is mapped on the southern side of the headland. Its regional BGS description is chiefly thick-bedded skeletal limestone, with finer-grained beds and thin muddy partings; its formal age is Arundian. The base and complete thickness are not measured in the small visitor cove. Regional thickness figures from other districts should not be transferred here.
HUNTS BAY OOLITE SUBGROUP
Cornelly Oolite and Stormy Limestone belong to this subgroup within the Pembroke Limestone Group. The regional succession changes upwards from predominantly ooidal limestone to more varied shallow-water carbonate facies. The formation descriptions below explain the mapped units without inventing local member subdivisions or forcing Dixon’s older fossil-zone boundaries onto modern contacts.
Cornelly Oolite Formation
Published mapping places Cornelly Oolite through much of the headland. The regional formation contains thick-bedded, locally cross-bedded ooid grainstone and subordinate skeletal limestone. The BGS formation age range is Arundian to Holkerian. Its lower boundary is a transition from the more skeletal High Tor Limestone; the upper boundary is defined by the first calcite-mudstone bed of the Stormy Limestone. These are formal regional definitions, not freshly located contacts on the cove floor. No local total thickness is established by the map.
Stormy Limestone Formation
This unit is mapped towards the northern headland and quarry. In the regional definition, fine calcite mudstones alternate with shelly, ooidal and other shallow-water limestones, including oncolitic beds. The formation’s BGS age range is Holkerian to Asbian, whereas the subgroup’s shorter general age label ends in the Holkerian; that difference is not used to give an unsupported precise local bed age. No Glamorgan formation thickness or member is imported into Lydstep. Its upper contact in Pembrokeshire is a palaeokarst surface beneath the Oxwich Head Limestone, but this does not establish a complete exposed modern formation boundary at the western cove.
Earlier fossil-zone terminology and southern exposures. Dixon’s C2/S1, S2 and D1 divisions are historical biostratigraphic units rather than modern formations. His regional five-group C2/S1 scheme has a typical total of about 360 ft and is not a single measured Lydstep log. In the local southern exposures, Black Mixen has 32 ft of basal bellerophon beds, with the lowest 6 ft dolomitised. Local group 3 is about 30 ft thick. Group 4 forms Whitesheet Rock and Lydstep Point and is relatively poor in fossils, with Lithostrotion apparently ranging through it but an uncertain first occurrence. Group 5 is best exposed north-west of Whitesheet Rock, and its course through the cliffs is marked by caves and narrow slots. These observations describe separate exposures, not an invitation to reach inaccessible cliff faces.
Lydstep Quarry: historic S2 section. The following five beds are retained in descending order, e to a, below the basal D1 oolite. They total 270½ ft of recorded exposure. The lowest listed bed is only an exposed part of a larger unit, so this sum is not a modern formation thickness. Beds b–e total 185½ ft, described approximately as nearly 200 ft in the memoir; the larger basal group was estimated at about 500 ft locally.
Bed e — 12½ ft. Dark, thin-bedded limestone, with Seminula ficoides abundant in some beds. The name is retained as a historical identification.
Bed d — 3 ft. Clay containing nodules of limestone, separating the limestone packages above and below.
Bed c — 60 ft. Dark, thin-bedded limestone with fine-grained ‘chinastone’ beds, shaly partings, occasional dolomite and thin black chert near the base. Seminula ficoides, Lithostrotion martini, Productus species, including the historical ‘giganteus’ form, or gastropods are abundant in different beds rather than uniformly throughout.
Bed b — 110 ft. Dark fine-grained limestone and pale oolite, with the same general historical fossil assemblage as bed c. This is a quarry record, not a separate species list for the cove.
Bed a — 85 ft exposed. A massive package of light-grey limestone and oolite with subordinate fine-grained material. Chonetes ‘papilionacea’ was locally abundant. The figure records only the exposed top of the larger basal group.
South Lydstep Haven and adjacent quarry: historic D1 section. Dixon recorded ten groups in descending order, 10 to 1. Their listed values sum to 269½–294½ ft, with qualifications for incomplete exposure. His separate estimate from outcrop width was 270–300 ft. Both describe the historical section; neither is a new precisely measured total or a log of the western cove. ‘Pseudobreccia’ below is a texture within the Carboniferous limestone and is distinct from the younger fault-related breccia bodies.
Group 10 — 35–60 ft inferred. Cherty, decalcified debris with few brachiopods, including an unexposed interval. The range is an estimate rather than continuously visible rock.
Group 9 — 52 ft seen. Predominantly dolomitic, pseudobrecciated limestone, with thin mudstone or clay layers. Coral-bearing beds include historical records of Lithostrotion, Dibunophyllum and Cyathophyllum; Productus and Chonetes are locally frequent.
Group 8 — 5 ft. Limestone and friable mudstone containing numerous large productid brachiopods, historically described as giganteid Productus.
Group 7 — 1½ ft. A coral bed with Dibunophyllum and giganteid Productus.
Group 6 — 22½ ft. Chiefly light-grey limestone, commonly dolomitic and pseudobrecciated.
Group 5 — 2 ft. Black calcareous shale and dark limestone.
Group 4 — 27 ft. Varied limestone including dark, shaly and nodular beds. Giganteid Productus and Lithostrotion junceum are frequent in the darker beds.
Group 3 — 1½ ft. Clay with a carbonaceous lower part and buff upper part containing quartz pebbles up to 2 inches across.
Group 2 — 63 ft. Light-grey limestone, oolitic below and pseudobrecciated above, with variable clay partings. A middle 4 ft limestone contains abundant Productus, D1-zone corals and Seminula. Cyrtina septosa was frequent in the lower 30 ft.
Group 1 — 60 ft. Massive pale oolite with a darker, non-oolitic basal transition. The historical fauna includes Productus, Dibunophyllum and Cyathophyllum murchisoni.
Faunal provenance. The memoir’s regional fauna tables are arranged by biozone, not by locality, so their combined species list cannot be assigned to Lydstep. Records from the farm, Lodge, northern Haven shore, Caldey and St Margaret’s remain separate from the Point, quarry and western cove. Historical names in the local logs are retained to keep the evidence traceable; uncertain modern synonymies have not been silently imposed.
Quarry bryozoan specimens. Lee’s 1912 study records Geological Survey specimens Pr. 3482 and Pr. 3483 from Lydstep Quarry in the historical upper Seminula subzone. They resembled Stenopora redesdalensis, but had thicker walls and a few partitions in the outer parts of their microscopic tubes. The material was insufficient for a separate description, so it should not be reported as a confirmed occurrence of that species or as a Lydstep holotype. These are quarry specimens, not records from the western cove.
Younger breccia: Whitesheet and Lydstep Point. Woodcock and colleagues mapped separate bodies broadly parallel to bedding and bounded or displaced by cross faults. Their locality 16, Lydstep Point on the eastern side immediately south of the quarry, has bedding dipping approximately 85° north, a reported zone width of about 70 m and one fault core. Crackle, mosaic and chaotic breccia, carbonate cement and sediment matrix are recorded. The width is not a vertical bed thickness.
Whitesheet comparison. Locality 15 lies west of the Point and has a similarly steep dip and roughly 70 m zone width, but three fault cores. Megabreccia and cataclasite are recorded there; they are not marked for Lydstep Point in the same comparative table. These distinctions prevent all of the headland’s broken limestone being labelled as one identical deposit. Draught Cove farther west is a third locality and its infill fossils or laminated micrite are not automatically Point records.
Origin and age of the infill. Sharp, near-planar margins, limited damage outside the bodies and locally kinked wall rocks support extension normal to bedding and collapse. The bodies occupy slightly different stratigraphic levels and may overlap or be separated by transfer faults. Regional comparison favours a latest Triassic, Rhaetian episode, but does not directly date the Lydstep fill; a broader Mesozoic history and later extension must remain possible. The Carboniferous age of fossils within limestone fragments dates the host material, not the collapse event.
Cement and cave deposits. Calcite cement, sediment filling the spaces between broken clasts and modern cave deposits should be distinguished. Laminated carbonate infill at regional examples such as Draught has been called stalagmite or hot-water travertine in older interpretations, whereas the 2014 work favoured well-cemented sediment. That interpretation is not a licence to identify every vein or pink carbonate patch in the visitor cove as the same material.
REFERENCES
Dixon, E. E. L. (1921). The geology of the South Wales Coalfield. Part XIII: The country around Pembroke and Tenby. Geological Survey memoir; especially pp. 103, 111–115 and 163, with locality register pp. 84–85.
Woodcock, N. H., Miller, A. V. M. and Woodhouse, C. D. (2014). Chaotic breccia zones on the Pembroke Peninsula, South Wales: Evidence for collapse into voids along dilational faults. Journal of Structural Geology 69, 91–107. DOI: 10.1016/j.jsg.2014.09.019; Figures 2, 6 and 9 and accompanying text.
British Geological Survey Lexicon: High Tor Limestone Formation, Hunts Bay Oolite Subgroup, Cornelly Oolite Formation and Stormy Limestone Formation. Regional unit definitions are distinguished from measured local exposures.
Lee, G. W. (1912). The British Carboniferous Trepostomata. Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, Palaeontology, volume I, part 3, pp. 135–195; Lydstep Quarry specimens discussed on pp. 154 and 158.
SAFETY
Plan around the tide and sea conditions, leaving enough time to regain the steps before the water rises. The caverns are accessible only at low tide; do not assume the short distance to the car park prevents tidal cut-off. Avoid the shore in rough seas and do not enter a cave or narrow recess where waves or a rising tide could block the way out.
Keep well clear of cliff bases and overhangs. Rockfalls can occur without warning, and loose blocks, wet limestone and seaweed make the foreshore uneven and slippery. Watch children closely, do not climb the cliffs for fossils and allow for the steep climb back up the 100 steps.
Mobile reception may be unreliable below the cliffs. Tell someone your route and expected return time, carry a charged phone and keep an easy route back to the steps. Keep dogs on leads around the headland and give grazing cattle plenty of space.
EQUIPMENT
Sturdy footwear, a hand lens, a camera and a small scale for photographs are the most useful items. Carry current tide information, water and clothing suitable for an exposed coast. A phone photograph of the approach and steps can help you recognise the return route.
Hammering is unnecessary for fossil spotting and risks damaging both specimens and the exposure. If removal of particular loose material is explicitly permitted, take modest wrapping and a small rigid box; do not bring tools with the expectation of extracting fossils from cliffs or fixed boulders.
CLEANING AND TREATING
Only prepare a specimen that you have permission to remove. Begin with a soft dry brush. Stable limestone may tolerate a gentle rinse, but muddy partings and weathered or fractured material can break down in water; test cautiously and let a wet specimen dry slowly at room temperature.
Coral and shell skeletons may be calcitic like the surrounding limestone. Avoid vinegar, household acids and bleach, which can attack the fossil as well as its matrix. Do not force hard limestone away from a coral cross-section: the fossil may split with the rock. Detailed mechanical preparation requires control and magnification, and a good natural surface is often best left alone. Retain location notes and photographs, and seek specialist advice before preparing an unusual or potentially significant specimen.
IDENTIFY YOUR FINDS
Need help identifying a fossil? Share clear photos, where you found it and its size with the community.
FURTHER READING
Woodcock and colleagues: the Pembroke Peninsula breccias
BGS: Hunts Bay Oolite Subgroup
National Trust: Lydstep cliffs and caverns walk
ACCESS RIGHTS
The National Trust advertises walking access to Lydstep Head and the low-tide caverns. Ask the National Trust for the landowner’s permission before removing fossils or loose rock, and check the rules for the exact part of the shore you intend to visit. Walking access and the presence of loose stones do not establish collecting permission. Unless removal has been explicitly agreed, enjoy the fossils through observation and photography.
The Lydstep Head coast has recognised conservation interest. The broader Lydstep Head to Tenby Burrows SSSI and the Church Doors–Lydstep Headland geological site should not be treated as permissions to enter every exposure or remove material. Do not hammer bedrock, quarry faces or fixed boulders. Follow current signs, any temporary restrictions and the landowner’s instructions; check with Natural Resources Wales where an activity could affect protected features.
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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