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Category Archives: shells
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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Snippet 15: The continuing mystery of the piddocks
The tide is ebbing and, along the inner edge of a shallow channel on the shore, it has deposited a line of offerings, neatly sorted: predominantly mussel shells, some black, some striped, all shining wetly in the October sun; a … Continue reading
Posted in Allonby, Found Objects, sea-bed & undersea, shells, Snippets, submerged forest
Tagged Pholas, piddocks, Zirfaea
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The Walls of Parton
‘Are you looking for the old port?’ The man seemed to have appeared from nowhere, yet he was tall and strongly built, white hair sticking up straight, not easy to overlook. ‘Port?’ I was bemused – I’d been poking at … Continue reading
Posted in coal, coastal heritage, fossils, industrial heritage, ports, sandstone, slag-banks, stones
Tagged coal, fossil plants, sandstone, ships, Solway
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Freshwater mussels in the West Cumbrian coalfield
The late Norman Hammond once told me that he used to go out in his boat to count the basking sharks when they came into the Solway. One time, he was motoring off Fleswick Bay near Whitehaven during a coal-miners’ … Continue reading
Posted in coal, fossils, industrial heritage, sea-bed & undersea, shells
Tagged Anthracomya, Carbonicola, freshwater mussels, musselbeds
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‘Signor tuberculato’, PH Gosse and Charles Kingsley
Cockle shells are piled like snow-drifts amongst the trees at the top of the bay; they form banks and ridges along the shore. Balcary Bay, its entrance partly plugged by Heston Island, looks to be a tranquil and sheltered haven, … Continue reading
Posted in fishing, shells
Tagged Allonby Bay, Balcary Bay, Charles Kingsley, cockles, Gosse, mussels, Seaside Pleasures, shells
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Hunting for ‘guggies’, and finding ‘canoes’, on the Galloway shore
We went to the Scottish side of the Solway Firth to hunt for a boring mollusc. Or, rather more accurately, for the empty shells of a marine snail, Natica monilifera, known variously as the Necklace Shell, the beaded Nerite, or … Continue reading
Posted in shells, tidelines
Tagged dog-whelks, Gosse, Luce Bay, Natica, shells, the Mull of Galloway, tideline
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Loom-stones or fishing-weights? (And the role of piddocks)
In my post on March 21st 2014 I wrote about an object I had found on the shore near Beckfoot, which one of my shore-walkers told me was a warp-weight or loom-stone; I subsequently saw similar objects used to keep … Continue reading
Posted in shells, stones
Tagged boring molluscs, fishing nets, fishing-weights, loom-stone, piddocks, Romans
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Tyrean Purple dye, Philip Henry Gosse, and the Bell Rock lighthouse
Puzzling about the link to Solway Shore-walker? It is the dog-whelk Nucella lapillus, the ‘boring mollusc’ of an earlier blog-post. On page 182 of Natural History: The Mollusca, published in 1854, Philip Henry Gosse writes: ‘From Mr Stevenson’s interesting account … Continue reading
Posted in shells
Tagged dog-whelks, Gosse, lighthouse, Seaside Pleasures, Tyrean Purple dye
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Boring molluscs and bevelled edges
Dog-whelks, Nucella lapillus, were clustered on the mid-shore rocks in late April; singles, twos and threes, they were apparently uninterested in the barnacles beneath their feet, but were there to socialise or, more specifically, to meet partners of the opposite … Continue reading
Posted in shells, tidelines
Tagged dog-whelks, Gosse, mussels, Natica, shells, shore-walks, tideline
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Solway Shore-walker 