Limestone pavements are areas of glacially scoured limestone characterized by large, worn limestone blocks called clints separated by deep fissures known as grykes. The habitat is widely scattered in Britain, on Carboniferous Limestone in Wales, Northern England, and Northern Ireland, and Durness Limestone in Scotland.

Grykes can be up to 6m deep, although most are 1-2 m. Shallow erosion pans and pockmarks are also found on the intervening blocks (‘clints’). Most limestone pavement is grazed, and the rock surface supports little if any vegetation.

It is thought that limestone pavement was formed by the scouring action of glaciers on horizontally-bedded limestone. Grykes were probably formed by weathering and the action of rainwater on lines of weakness within the rock, although some deep grykes are considered to have been formed some 30 million years earlier during the Carboniferous period when the landscape was probably wooded.

Rainwater became more acidic as it filtered through the woodland soils, enhancing its ability to create “dissolution features” in the underlying rock. As grykes became bigger, soil washing into them may have vanished away into the underground cave systems characteristic of limestone country, revealing the rock. Human clearance of woodland and subsequent grazing speeded up this process.

According to the Internet