Presipe’s steep red-and-grey cliffs reveal ancient river deposits, fossil soils and traces of animal activity. Burrows and tracks occur on some bedding surfaces, while cracks, ripples and calcrete structures help explain the landscape in which the rocks formed.
FIND FREQUENCY – Trace-bearing surfaces occur locally, but visibility varies with exposure and light. This is chiefly a place to observe and photograph geology.
CHILDREN – The steep descent, cliff edges and tidal coves require close supervision. Do not take children scrambling around headlands or onto fallen blocks.
ACCESS – Reached from the Coast Path by a very steep descent with many steps. Plan for a substantial climb back out.
TYPE – Late Silurian–Early Devonian terrestrial strata, fossil soils, burrows and arthropod tracks.
DIRECTIONS
♦ Use the signed Coast Path between Manorbier and Skrinkle Haven. The National Park route describes the steep stepped descent to Presipe at grid reference SS06949698.
♦ From Manorbier, follow the Coast Path eastwards; from the Skrinkle side, follow the current waymarked route westwards. Do not follow old mapped paths into Conigar Pit or the military range.
♦ Check current parking signs and charges at your chosen starting point. Plan a low-tide visit and a return by the same beach steps, allowing time for the climb.
♦ Original guide reference: 51.63807°N, 4.78906°W. Use the signed route and current local information rather than treating this coordinate as a fossil-bed position.
FOSSIL HUNTING
Look for traces on bedding surfaces. Published descriptions record Beaconites burrows and unnamed arthropod tracks at Presipe. These are evidence of animal activity rather than preserved animal bodies. Light falling across a surface at a low angle can make subtle tracks easier to see; photograph the whole surface and then the detail with a scale.
The older guide described conspicuous red, rounded patches, some roughly tennis-ball sized, as filled burrows and suggested a millipede-like maker. That producer is an interpretation, not a body-fossil identification. Calcrete nodules and colour changes can also make rounded patches; a reliable burrow identification depends on shape, fill and its relationship to bedding.
Large mud-filled desiccation cracks, ripples, current bedding and scours are also visible in the succession. These are physical sedimentary structures. Preserve their context: do not hammer, scrape or lever bedding surfaces, climb the cliffs, or follow the older guide’s scramble around successive headlands. Photograph in-situ features and leave them intact.
Significant discoveries and geological research at Presipe.
1921 – The faulted coastal exposures documented
Dixon’s memoir distinguished the western and back-of-cove rock packages across the Manorbier fault. This is a published geological description, not an established first fossil-discovery date.
1982 – A local partial log and marker interval published
Williams and colleagues illustrated Presipe’s calcrete-rich partial section and recorded the 5.85 m tuff-to-sandstone separation, alongside clearly separate Conigar Pit measurements.
2005 – Calcrete structures illustrated in the Geological Conservation Review
The GCR brought together the coast’s geological interest and illustrated Presipe’s near-vertical, bowed calcrete structures. Its local account describes burrows, tracks, cracks and scours.
2015 – Modern stratigraphic names clarified
The BGS framework set out Daugleddau Group and Milford Haven Subgroup relationships and the formation/member nomenclature used here. This was a classification and correlation milestone.
GEOLOGY
Presipe exposes two fault-separated parts of the Old Red Sandstone succession. The western cliff is mudstone-rich Moor Cliffs Formation, while younger sandstone-rich Freshwater West Formation, including the Conigar Pit Sandstone Member, occurs in the central and back-of-bay sector. Both lie within the Milford Haven Subgroup of the Daugleddau Group.
River channels and sheet floods deposited sand and reworked mud and carbonate soil material. Exposed floodplains developed cracks and calcrete, while occasional volcanic ash formed useful marker beds. The Moor Cliffs Formation spans the late Silurian Přídolí into the earliest Devonian Lochkovian; the local Freshwater West unit is Lochkovian. Faulting means that walking across the cove is not a continuous passage through one measured log.
Presipe’s fault-separated formations, local partial log, fossil soils and trace evidence.
Locality and structure. The western cliff and central/back-of-bay exposures are separated by the major right-lateral fault near SS06909707. Williams and colleagues mapped near-vertical beds with separate local dip symbols, rather than one angle applicable to every exposure. These sectors must not be joined into an uninterrupted measured column.
DAUGLEDDAU GROUP
MILFORD HAVEN SUBGROUP
The 2015 BGS framework places both formations within the Milford Haven Subgroup of the Daugleddau Group. The older name Milford Haven Group is historical. Old Red Sandstone is used here as the familiar regional facies term; this framework does not supply a separately formalised supergroup boundary for the guide.
Moor Cliffs Formation
Western-cliff floodplain deposits. Red mudstone and siltstone contain repeated calcretized palaeosols, carbonate nodules and fans, thin fine- to medium-grained sandstone and intraformational conglomerate. Calcrete formed during soil development. Its bowed or pseudoanticlinal structures do not mean the whole succession is folded at each bow. The GCR’s westward-looking Presipe photograph shows the near-vertical succession younging from left to right.
The 1982 partial measured log. Williams and colleagues illustrated a window approximately 55 m high, with major marks from 0 to 50 m and a top extending a little higher. Its zero marks the base of the illustrated window, not a demonstrated formation boundary. The graphic contains five labelled conglomeratic horizons, four B and one A, and two tuff symbols. It does not provide a numbered-bed thickness table.
Lower and middle parts of the window. The approximate 0–10 m interval is dominated by mudstone and calcrete profiles. In the approximate 10–20 m part, a thin B-labelled conglomeratic horizon and a T-labelled tuff interrupt the calcretized mudstones. Repeated mudstone and calcrete continue through roughly 20–40 m, with another B-labelled horizon towards the upper part. These positions describe the plotted graphic, not newly surveyed bed heights.
Upper part of the window. Between roughly 40 m and the illustrated top, sandstone and conglomeratic layers are more conspicuous among the mudstone and calcrete. One A-labelled and two further B-labelled conglomerates, and the upper T-labelled tuff, complete the five-conglomerate and two-tuff inventory. Neither generic tuff label is individually named Rook’s Cave Tuff in the figure.
Reading the sedimentary symbols. The key distinguishes mudstone, sandstone, conglomerate, calcrete, tuff, cross-lamination, cross-bedding and parallel lamination. A conglomerates accompany relatively thick channel sandstones and have a quartzose sandy matrix. B conglomerates occur among mudstones and chiefly comprise locally reworked calcrete and mudstone clasts without a sandy matrix; the authors interpreted them as local ephemeral-drainage deposits. The key’s separately illustrated Caldey section is not a Presipe log.
The exact local tuff marker. The published account places the Rook’s Cave Tuff high in the north-western corner, 5.85 m below a prominent fine- to medium-grained cross-bedded sandstone. That number measures the separation between those two markers. It is not the tuff’s thickness, a distance above the formation base or an interval to the Townsend Tuff. Priest’s Nose tuff measurements are not substituted for Presipe.
Freshwater West Formation
Conigar Pit Sandstone Member
Central and back-of-bay sector. The younger rocks include upward-fining sandstone–mudstone cycles, ripple-marked surfaces, mud-filled desiccation polygons and local soft-sediment deformation. Published descriptions record arthropod tracks, Beaconites burrows and large scours. Scours, cracks and ripples are physical sedimentary structures, not additional fossil taxa. No complete thickness is established for this exact cove sector.
Ancient rivers and soils. Seasonal channels and sheet floods reworked sand, mud and older carbonate soil material. Periodic emergence allowed further soil formation and cracking. The GCR synthesis explains how much of the mud may have travelled as aggregates rather than solely settling from suspension. This regional depositional model helps interpret the local facies; it does not establish a detailed climate history for a single bedding surface.
Nearby type-section comparisons
Conigar Pit is a separate section. The type section at SS07249696, east of Presipe, has eleven lateral-accretion complexes 0.70–3.09 m thick and five horizons bearing ostracoderm debris. Most accretion sets close southwards, with northward and westward examples also described. The underlying Chapel Point Limestone Member calcrete is at least 11.20 m thick there. These are neighbouring measurements and records, not eleven measured Presipe cycles or five Presipe fish beds.
The BGS value of 265 m applies to the Conigar Pit member at its type section. Regional Moor Cliffs and Freshwater West formation ranges of 120–371 m and 305–580 m are likewise not cove thicknesses. Historical “Calcretes Member” is a synonym of the Chapel Point Limestone Member, not another unit; that formal boundary is not asserted at the base of the Presipe partial log.
Fossil identifications and historical mapping
The exact Presipe evidence established by Williams and the GCR is Beaconites at genus level and unnamed arthropod tracks. Neither account provides a Presipe species diagnosis, specimen accession, collection date or named discoverer. The GCR cites the 2004 regional trace-fossil study, but that study’s own locality inventory and systematic records do not identify Presipe. Its named species and Bristol vouchers belong to other explicitly named sites and are not added to this guide’s checklist.
The 2009 tuff study also uses formation-wide or generalized profiles without resolved Presipe specimen sites. Its Freshwater East Formation photographs do not establish fossils at Presipe, and its generalized Rook’s Cave and Townsend profiles supply no local measured Presipe log. Proposed animal producers, tsunami transport and nutrient-driven colonisation remain interpretations of the wider evidence, not demonstrated events or body-fossil discoveries here.
Dixon’s historical numbered groups. In 1921, Dixon placed the west cliff in his group 2 and the back of the cove in group 3, separated by the NNW Manorbier cross-fault. Those numbers are historical subdivisions, not the modern group rank. His wider fault discussion describes rightward heave and westward hade for the Manorbier faults; the adjacent Conigar–Old Castle Head fault has a different orientation and movement. The quarter-mile displacement discussed farther inland concerns Millstone Grit and is not a Presipe vertical throw.
Sources. Williams, Allen & Marshall (1982), Old Red Sandstone facies of the Pembroke Peninsula, south of the Ritec Fault, pp. 170–173 and Figures 7–8; Dixon (1921), The country around Pembroke and Tenby, p. 40 and pp. 179–184; Barclay, GCR31 (2005), pp. 301–308; BGS RR/14/02 (2015), sections 4.1.4–4.1.5. For the wider trace-fossil and tuff studies, see Morrissey & Braddy (2004), DOI 10.1002/gj.991, and Marriott, Morrissey & Hillier (2009), DOI 10.1016/j.palaeo.2009.01.001.
SAFETY
Check the tide and weather before setting out. Do not round headlands or rely on a beach shortcut remaining open. Keep a clear return to the steps; turn back if the route is cut off or conditions deteriorate.
Stay on the Coast Path and away from cliff edges, overhangs and fissures. Do not sit below cliffs or climb rock faces. Wet rock, seaweed and loose blocks are slippery; wear footwear with good grip.
Mobile coverage can be unreliable. Tell someone your route and expected return time. The beach has deep hollows and is remote; a calm-looking cove is not a guarantee of safe swimming.
EQUIPMENT
Bring a camera, scale, notebook, hand lens, suitable footwear, water and weatherproof clothing. A tide forecast and a means of checking your route are more useful here than collecting tools.
Do not bring tools with the intention of extracting cliff or bedding-plane traces. If any collecting is proposed, obtain the required permissions first and follow the restrictions given for the precise site.
CLEANING AND TREATING
In-situ surfaces should be left untouched. For an already detached specimen which has been lawfully collected, begin with a dry soft brush and record its original locality, orientation and matrix. Avoid soaking fragile red mudstone.
Do not use acid on calcrete or carbonate-cemented material, and do not apply an untested consolidant. Surface relief and sedimentary relationships can be lost through aggressive cleaning; seek specialist advice before attempting preparation.
IDENTIFY YOUR FINDS
Need help identifying a fossil? Share clear photos, where you found it and its size with the community.
FURTHER READING
National Park Coast Path information: Manorbier to Presipe
National Park geological conservation and collecting guidance
BGS Old Red Sandstone framework
Geological Conservation Review: south Wales Old Red Sandstone
ACCESS RIGHTS
Protected geological coast. Presipe is part of the Freshwater East–Skrinkle Haven geological-conservation coast. The National Park Authority states that its Geological Conservation Review sites lie within protected SSSIs. Public footpath access does not itself grant permission to collect.
Seek permission from the landowner and Natural Resources Wales before removing fossils or minerals from an SSSI. The National Park’s geological code favours photography and warns against hammering or coring that damages geological or biological features. Leave the cliffs, track surfaces and calcrete structures intact.
Follow current signs, temporary closures and the waymarked Coast Path. Do not enter the military range or treat a historical geological section description as a safe visitor route.
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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