BSW2 7. The scary woman/Belshade fault

Speaker: Patsy McNultyFrom the Bluestack Way Part 2 playlist.Patsy tells of the woman who scared all the local children when they saw her. She wore a stocking on her head after she burned her face.The trace of the Belshade fault trends down the Eglish valley and lies at the foot of the hills and marks the contact between the Carboniferous rocks and the Barnesmore granite, the hills in the centre and west are Precambrian Lough Mourne Schists. The contact between the granite and the schists lies in the little valley between the two ridges. The rock types can be differentiated at a distance by the steep faces that form in the granite and the sloping faces that represent the Lough Mourne Schists.  Along the ridges to the west are two knobs of rock. These are smaller granite outcrops related to Barnesmore granite and their distinctive knobbly shape indicates their difference from the Lough Mourne Schists. The slope profile of the western part of the ridge changes from steep at the top to shallower at the bottom and marks the trace of a second fault – the Boundary Fault. Coinciding with this change in slope is a change in vegetation that is reflecting the underlying rocks. The heather-dominated lower slopes of the western part of the hill are Carboniferous sandstones while the grassier parts are Upper Mourne Schists. Travelling down the valley, there are examples of houses abandoned during the famine, lazy beds and stone kilns used to burn limestone to provide fertiliser.