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Author Archives: solwayshorewalker
Haematite in Eskdale
On the first weekend in October the annual ‘Keswick’ Show and Sale of Herdwick sheep is held in Mitchell’s Livestock Mart in Cockermouth. Our tup ‘Bonzo’ had been accepted for official registration in the breed’s Stock Book: his appearance – … Continue reading
Posted in geology, haematite, industrial heritage, LIMESTONE, limestone and haematite, quarries
Tagged Herdwicks, iron ore, mines, raddle, Ravenglass
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Quicklime: Hot Mix
It’s May 2021, the latest lockdown for Covid has been eased and crossing the Border between Scotland and England is once more permissible, so I drive North to Canonbie where Alex Gibbons has his yard. I’ve known Alex since 2016, … Continue reading
Posted in coastal heritage, conservation, LIMESTONE, limestone limekilns, quicklime
Tagged clay dabbin, hot lime, lime cycle, mortar, pigments, plaster
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Limestone: the Tata Shapfell kilns
The motorway sweeps down past the smooth rounded ‘sleeping elephants’ of the Howgill fells, down into the valley by Tebay, and then up again onto the moorland heights of Shap. Suddenly, incongruously, you see a tall vertical array of cylinders … Continue reading
Posted in industrial heritage, LIMESTONE, limestone limekilns, quarries, quicklime
Tagged Maerz, Shap, steel, Tata
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Limestone: quicklime, tubs and ghostly kilns
Lime kilns are a feature of limestone country. Many are small, and slotted into hillsides and escarpments like eyes in a skull, their brows an arch of brick or stone. Others are taller more imposing stone-built structures, sometimes with fancy … Continue reading
Posted in coastal heritage, industrial heritage, LIMESTONE, limestone limekilns
Tagged railways, Warthole
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Skeletons: sea-sorted
Gently, the waves carry and deposit their offerings, seeking suitable places to pile them: fine black grains of coal in the hollows between ripples; grey-white tangles of hornwrack, heaped beside a log, the minute animals dead within their skeletal cells; … Continue reading
Posted in Found Objects, tidelines
Tagged bird skeleton, flotsam
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Limestone: Death assemblages
The boulders are the fossilised graveyard of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the shells of brachiopods, that lived then died about 300 million years ago. These tangled remains of former lives are what geologists call a ‘death assemblage’ [1]. A variety … Continue reading
Posted in fossils, geology, LIMESTONE, limestone fossils
Tagged Carboniferous, death assemblage, fossil brachiopods, fossil corals
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Limestone: ‘pavement’ plants
Great Asby Scar, in the Orton Fells on the east side of Cumbria, is one of the best limestone pavements in Britain. From Victorian times until fairly recently, areas of the pavement were plundered and damaged due to the fashion … Continue reading
Posted in LIMESTONE, limestone pavements
Tagged clints, ferns, Great Asby Scar, grikes, Romano-British
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Limestone: the language of pavements
Clints, grikes, karst, karren and kamenitsas – they are evidence of the power of water in its liquid or frozen state, the power that sculpts limestone to form ‘pavements’. Smooth surfaces, reflecting light from the sky when wet; slippery underfoot; … Continue reading
Posted in LIMESTONE, limestone pavements
Tagged Carboniferous, clints, Great Asby Scar, grikes, kamenitsa, karren, Westmorland Dales
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In limestone country: Clints Crags
The village where I live is at the foot of a limestone plateau on the north-west edge of the Lake District. It is one of a line of low-lying villages where springs arise to feed becks that flow out onto … Continue reading
Posted in LIMESTONE, limestone scenery
Tagged dolines, erratics, limestone and drystone walls, limestone pavements, sink-holes
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Limestone in the Lake District: an Introduction
During the third lockdown, at the start of 2021, I re-visited some limestone kilns, a short walk from where I live. Coincidentally, I’d been re-reading some of Norman Nicholson’s poems and one in particular, The Seven Rocks, kept drawing me … Continue reading
Posted in geology, industrial archaeology, LIMESTONE, limestone, an introduction
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Solway Shore-walker 