Research
Wooldridge's work concentrated mainly on the London Basin and the Weald, his first (1921) paper being on folding within the London Basin. Other publications looked at the Reading Beds, Eocene and Pliocene deposits and the structural and geomorphological evolution of the basin. Inspired by the theories of W.M.Davis on cycles of landscape evolution, Wooldridge employed detailed fieldwork to identify features such as river terraces and erosion surfaces, for example a presumed platform at 200 feet above modern sea level. In the later 1930s collaboration with colleague David Linton culminated in the 1939 classic Structure, Surface and Drainage of South-East England.
The 'Wooldridge and Linton Model' of landscape evolution was dependent on the identification of remnants of three widely developed erosion surfaces: a warped sub-Eocene surface; a high-level unwarped Neogene peneplain and an unwarped Plio-Pleistocene marine platform. It explained both the concordant drainage pattern of the central Weald (through long-term sub-aerial erosion), and the widespread discordant features (as being related to a high-level marine shelf).
Wooldridge also collaborated with fellow King's alumnus Dudley Stamp. Wooldridge had provided petrological input to a paper with Stamp on the Silurian of Wales as early as 1923 and, like Stamp, moved from geology towards human geography. Wooldridge's interest lay in relating early human settlement and land use to the physical landscape. In 1951 Stamp at LSE and Wooldridge at King's jointly edited London Essays in Geography.
Read more about this topic: Sidney William Wooldridge
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