Reconstruction of the environment in the Voyage area around 365 million years ago (late-Devonian) when the Quartz Conglomerate was being deposited. The orientation of this view is northward. Below an eastward view, which emphasises the fault scarp that possibly existed at that time along the line of the East Malvern Fault. At that time the land to the east (i.e. the Severn Valley of today) was higher than the ground to the west – the opposite of today’s arrangement.

The area in which the Quartz Conglomerate was deposited seems to have been a lowland tract positioned between high ground to the east and west. Both these areas of high ground were possibly bounded by escarpments related to fault systems, hence they are termed fault scarps. The western fault scarp would have been located around 5 miles north of the present day Abergavenny and would been too far west to be visible in the northern view.

The upward displacement of crust to the east of the Malvern line resulted from the compressive forces from the thrust of Iberia and other pieces of the future southern Europe against the southern edge of Laurussian plate, where the British isles was located (he Acadian Orogeny), This is illustrated in the bottom schematic of plate arrangements around 380 million years ago.

The colloquial name if the Forest of Dean for the Quartz Conglomerate ia ‘Pudding Stone’. The new official name given by the British Geological Survey is Huntsham Hill Conglomerate. The name taken from a hill in the Wye Valley where spectacular exposures of the conglomerate are to be found.