Introduction
We thank Lennox et al. (2013) for giving us the opportunity to amplify our reasoning and to restate that the Manning and Hastings oroclines do exist.
Previous discussions with Lennox and co authors have indicated that we hold different ideas on the tectonic evolution of the southern New England oroclines. These divergences reflect our different approaches. Our approach is largely biostratigraphic. Building on older work, the stratigraphies erected by Roberts and students in the southern part of the Tamworth Belt and in the Hastings block were used to define the younging directions of packets of units, and this gave us a new appreciation of previously mapped major faults and folds (e.g. Roberts et al. 1995). We used this reinterpretation as a basis for constructing the first published 3D model for the Hastings Block and then examined that geometry in terms of possible block dynamics. This approach differs from the structural work of Lennox on the Hastings Block, which focused on the detailed measurements of mesoscopic structures, best exemplified by their 1999 paper (Lennox et al. 1999), wherein detailed plots of bedding, cleavage and bedding-cleavage intersections were shown on stereoplots based on 1:25 000 topographic sheet areas.
Below we reply in detail to the key points raised by Lennox et al., dividing our answers into comments on whether or not the Manning and Hastings oroclines exist, the structural geology of the Hastings Block (covered by their heading “crustal architecture»), and comments on other aspects.