In
geology,
Cornbrash was the name applied to the uppermost member of the
Bathonian stage of the
Jurassic formation in
England. It is an old English agricultural name applied in
Wiltshire to a variety of loose rubble or brash which, in that part of the country, forms a good soil for growing corn. The name was adopted by
William Smith for a thin band of shelly
limestone which, in the south of England, breaks up in the manner indicated. Although only a thin group of rocks (1025 feet c. 300 m), it is remarkably persistent; it may be traced from
Weymouth to the
Yorkshire coast, but in
north Lincolnshire it is very thin, and probably dies out in the neighborhood of the
Humber. It appears again, however, as a thin bed in Gristhorpe Bay,
Cayton Bay, Wheatcroft, Newton Dale and
Langdale. In the inland exposures in Yorkshire it is difficult to follow on account of its thinness, and the fact that it passes up into dark
shales in many places the so-called clays of the Cornbrash, with
Avicula echinata.