Culm Measures

The Culm Measures are a thick sequence of geological strata originating during the Carboniferous Period that occur in south-west England, principally in Devon and Cornwall, now known as the Culm Supergroup. Its estimated thickness varies between 3600m and 4750m though intense folding complicates it at outcrop. They are so called because of the occasional presence in the Barnstaple-Hartland area of a soft, often lenticular, sooty coal, which is known in Devon as culm. The word culm may be derived from the Old English word for coal col or from the Welsh word cwlwm meaning knot (due to the folding of the beds in which the coal is found).