Much of the parish is dominated by Carboniferous deposits deposited on the submarine platform of the Askrigg Block, which was a relatively high area forming a shelf sea buoyed up by Devonian Wensleydale Granite. It is separated from the Craven Basin to the south and west by the Craven Fault system. The lower Carboniferous deposits are dominated by the thick Great Scar limestones laid down during the Viséan stage. A mature karst landscape has formed where it outcrops, with bare limestone pavements, subterranean streams, and major solutional cave systems such as White Scar Caves and Meregill Hole. Scales Moor on the Whernside flanks of Chapel-le-Dale has one of the largest exposures of pavement in the Dales, measuring some long wide. On Whernside and Ingleborough above the flat plateau formed by the top of the Great Scar limestone, are the Brigantian and Namurian aged Yoredale cyclothem sequences of sandstone, limestone, and shales which were deposited on the edge of a huge delta. The upper ramparts of these hills are capped by thick beds of Grassington Grit, a course poorly-sorted sandstone laid down in shallower water as the delta prograded south.