Hinton Charterhouse Pit is a 0.4 hectare

Hectare

The hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...

 geological Site of Special Scientific Interest near the village of Hinton Charterhouse

Hinton Charterhouse

Hinton Charterhouse is a small village and civil parish in the Bath and North East Somerset unitary authority, Somerset, England. The parish, which includes the village of Midford, has a population of 477....

, Bath and North East Somerset

Bath and North East Somerset

Bath and North East Somerset is a unitary authority that was created on 1 April 1996 following the abolition of the County of Avon. It is part of the Ceremonial county of Somerset...

, notified in 1971.

The Hinton Sands, where a sparse bivalve fauna has been found, is an unusual sandy facies developed in the middle of the Forest Marble Jurassic

Jurassic

The Jurassic is a geologic period and system that extends from about Mya to  Mya, that is, from the end of the Triassic to the beginning of the Cretaceous. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic era, also known as the age of reptiles. The start of the period is marked by...

 Formation. This rock unit has strong associations with William Smith

William Smith (geologist)

William 'Strata' Smith was an English geologist, credited with creating the first nationwide geological map. He is known as the "Father of English Geology" for collating the geological history of England and Wales into a single record, although recognition was very slow in coming...

, who used the name Hinton Sands for the facies early in the 19th century.