Crime Rigg and Sherburn Hill Quarries is a Site of Special Scientific Interest

Site of Special Scientific Interest

A Site of Special Scientific Interest is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom. SSSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in Great Britain are based upon...

 in County Durham

County Durham

County Durham is a ceremonial county and unitary district in north east England. The county town is Durham. The largest settlement in the ceremonial county is the town of Darlington...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. It lies about 1 km east of the village of Sherburn Hill

Sherburn Hill

Sherburn Hill is a village in County Durham, in England. It is situated to the east of Sherburn.From 1835 to 1965, the Sherburn Hill Colliery operated near the village. In 1851, the Ebenezer Primitive Methodist Church was established in Sherburn Hill...

 and about 7 km east of the city of Durham

Durham

Durham is a city in north east England. It is within the County Durham local government district, and is the county town of the larger ceremonial county...

.

The site is a working quarry in which is exposed a sequence of Lower Permian Yellow Sands overlying Marl

Marl

Marl or marlstone is a calcium carbonate or lime-rich mud or mudstone which contains variable amounts of clays and aragonite. Marl was originally an old term loosely applied to a variety of materials, most of which occur as loose, earthy deposits consisting chiefly of an intimate mixture of clay...

 Slate

Slate

Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. The result is a foliated rock in which the foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering...

 and Lower Magnesian Limestone. The exposures of Permian sands exhibit complex cross-bedding

Cross-bedding

In geology, the sedimentary structures known as cross-bedding refer to horizontal units that are internally composed of inclined layers. This is a case in geology in which the original depositional layering is tilted, and the tilting is not a result of post-depositional deformation...

 that is believed to represent ancient seif dune deposits.