Landscape: Skomer Island Archive
Skomer Island is an island off the coast of Pembrokeshire, in the community of Marloes and St Brides in West Wales.
The island has an area of 2.92 km2 (720 acres). Its highest point is 79 m (259 ft) above sea level at Gorse Hill, while the majority of the island sits at around 60 m (200 ft) above sea level. Skomer is intersected by a series of slopes and ridges giving it a rich and varied topography. It is approximately 2.4 km (1.5 mi) from north–south and 3.2 km (2.0 mi) east–west.
The island is almost cut in two near its eastern side by two bays. It is one of several islands lying within a kilometre of the Pembrokeshire coast. A number of islets surround Skomer, the largest of which are: Middleholm (height 50 metres, 164 feet) separated from Skomer by Little Sound, the Mew Stone (60 metres, 197 feet) and the Garland Stone (32 metres, 105 feet).
"The rocks of Skomer form part of the Skomer Volcanic Group. This Group outcrops over a distance of over 40 km. from Grassholm Island and the Smalls in the west, through Skomer Island, Midland Island, and the Marloes Peninsula to St. Ishmaels in the east. Until quite recently the Group was thought to be of Lower Ordovician age but the discovery of poorly preserved ostracods on Midland Island in sediments of the same age as beds found at the Mew Stone on Skomer, indicates a late Ordovician or, more likely, a Silurian age for this lower part of the Group. The presence of the brachiopod Eocoelia hemispherica in a higher (and younger) part of the Group at Renney's Slip on the mainland shows that these latter rocks are undoubtedly of Lower Silurian (early Upper Llandovery) age. Thus the rocks of Skomer are probably of Lower Silurian age and formed during a period of time between about 420 and 430 million years ago."
(Skomer Island: An Information Booklet, Saunders D., 1989)
