Abstract To the east of the Welsh Borderland the Ordovician is exposed only in a few scattered outcrops, but it has a wide subsurface distribution, being known from many boreholes. The outcrops all appear along the Malvern lineament and the structural features at the edges of the Warwickshire and South Staffordshire coalfields, and, apart from the Lickey Hills inlier, are all known to be of Tremadoc age. Although all the Tremadoc rocks show general similarity to the Shineton Shale Formation, they have been described under several local names, as shown in Fig. 16. The succession in the Tortworth Inlier (Column 38) is from Curtis (1968), the age of the Micklewood Beds being revised by Fortey & Owens (1992). The Bronsil Shales of the Malvern Hills (Column 39) have yielded Cressagian fossils including Rhabdinopora fabelliformis socialis and the trilobite Boeckaspis mobergi (Worssam et al. 1989, p.6). The Lickey Quartzite SW of Birmingham (Column 40) was formerly attributed (with doubt) to the Cambrian and the Barnt Green Volcanic Formation to the Precambrian (Cowie et al . 1972), but Molyneux ( in Old et al . 1991, p.4) showed that these divisions are post-Cambrian and probably Ordovician in age. The Merevale Shale Formation of the Nuneaton and Dosthill Inliers (Column 41) overlie the Merioneth Series conformably and have yielded Rhabdinopora fabelliformis socialis from a horizon some 90 m above its base (Taylor & Rushton 1972, p.35), but the Merioneth-Tremadoc boundary is not closely constrained in the area (Bridge et al . 1998, p. 36).

Abstract Successions to either side of the Linley–Pontesford fault display important differences. East of this structure (Columns 35–37) the Caradoc strata rest unconformable on Precambrian to Tremadoc formations, while westerly successions (Columns 33–34) display early to mid-Ordovician strata. Taken together, the Ordovician rocks on the margins of Wales are not only classical, but afford the best-preserved faunas, and thick pre-Ashgill strata. The Geological Survey has published Memoirs covering much of the area (Pocock et al . 1938; Greig et al . 1968; Cave & Hains in press). Following Whittard’s (1955–67) monograph on the trilobites, the Shelve area graptolite succession has been described by Strachan (1986) and Hughes (1989), and the brachiopods by Williams (1974). Whittard’s map was published by W. T. Dean (Whittard 1979) and the stratigraphical terminology used in the column follows subsequent revision by Lynas et al. (1991).