Picture of the month
September 2013
Crown Quarry at Stainton
Comment:
Crown Quarry seen here is the most westerly of two joined quarries. Crown Quarry extracts limestone of the Park Limestone Formation which is stratigraphically lower than the Urswick Limestone Formation which was quarried in the adjoining Devonshire Quarry. The Park Limestone Formation at this location is noted for its purity and has been exported for a variety of industrial processes and products. The Urswick Limestone Formation was deposited during a later period in relatively shallow tropical seas in which the sedimentary deposits alternated between land and bottom sea sediments as the sea level significantly and repeatedly changed over approximately 100,000 year cycles. The deposits of calcium carbonate sediments which became the Park Limestone Formation were not subject to this cyclicity of emergent above-sea intervals.