Winchester–East Meon Anticline

The Winchester-East Meon Anticline is one of a series of parallel east–west trending folds in the Cretaceous chalk of Hampshire.

It lies at the western end of the South Downs, immediately to the north of the Hampshire Basin and south-east of Salisbury Plain.

[1] In order to avoid the Itchen Valley close to Winchester this cuts deeply through the younger beds to the north and south.

As with other nearby folds, the structure is controlled by movement of fault blocks within the Jurassic strata below.

Seismic surveys show faulting at depth in the Jurassic, but this tends to be represented in the Cretaceous at the surface by fold axes.