A shutterbug of stone

  Roach stone with many 'Portland screws' England’s ‘Jurassic Coast’ is rightly famous.  Stretching along the English Channel coastlines of Devon and Dorset, it’s rocks bear witness to the entire Mesozoic – the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods (together known as the ‘Age of the Dinosaurs’) from East to West.  That’s a span of 185 million years, in the space between Exmouth in the west to Old Harry Rocks at Studland Bay, Dorset. Even if geology isn’t your thing, you’ve seen quite a few bits of it on film or television – West Bay, Bridport, is the setting for Broadchurch, Lyme Regis was home to Mary Anning (and of course to Trey), Kimmeridge Bay is famous for its fossils, Weymouth hosted the maritime events in the 2012 Olympics, and Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door are rightly famous. Chesil Beach and the Fleet are very important for their geomorphology and the lagoonal fauna of the brackish water in the Fleet. The Isle of Portland, tied to the mainland at the eastern e

You've just got to love Portland Stone, with its distinct facies.  This is grove whitbed, a Jurassic limestone famous for being absolutely full of oysters.  I took this one, I think, at Green Park tube station in London. The station entrance, on Piccadilly, is literally a work of art; called Sea Strata, it was created by John Maine RA with the building clad in different facies of Portland Stone. This is the highly fossiliferous Grove Whitbed, which is full of oyster shells.

If there's a type of stone that characterises London, especially the Government estate and major historic buildings including Buckingham Palace and St Paul's, then that stone is Portland Stone. It's a limestone, dating back to the Jurassic Period; some facies (varieties) are very fossil-rich, with Grove Whitbed being rich in oysters, and Roach Stone being famous for it's 'Osses' heads' (Trigoniid bivalves) and Portland screws, a variety of gastropod mollusc.  Other facies are freestones, very suited to carving by stonemasons. There's a reason for the popularity of  Portland Stone in London, and for its use to rebuild St Paul's after the Great Fire of London in particular - Sir Christopher Wren owned shares in a certain quarry on the Isle of Portland!  His use of the stone set a trend, and now, in addition to the buildings I've already cited, think in terms of Regent Street, the Old Bailey, the Bank of England...  One of my favourite buildings is

A macro photo of Ketton Stone, demonstrating the ooliths it is composed of A lot of photos don’t really come out like you hope they  will.  They are fine, yes, but nothing to write home about – bog-standard landscape shots or whatever...   On the other hand, one occasionally does come out like you were really hoping it would, a landscape that takes your breath away or a detail of something you’ve seen.   This was one such photo, and yes, it does look like a certain well-known breakfast cereal!   I don’t think milk would soften it much, though. This particular photo is a macro shot of a piece of oolitic Lincolnshire Limestone, so we are  looking at a fairly small area of it.   The ooliths, which are each smaller than 1mm in diameter, are formed of layers of limestone – calcium carbonate – which have formed around a tiny piece of sand or shell.   I was lucky in that when I took the photo, the sun was shining – the lighting makes all the difference in photography!   I didn’t take it out o