A nice Friday afternoon puzzle for you all!
I wonder if any of you are able to help with identifying the stone in the attached image? It formed part of a drip moulding above a carved stone Elizabethan armorial over the entrance to Castle Cornet, here in Guernsey. The ‘drip moulding’
itself was clearly unsuited to the task in the long term as it had weathered very badly on the external edge. Given the nature of the limestone I’m not sure that replacing like for like on the historic building is ultimately the best idea (not my call, fortunately!)
but it would be nice to know where the stone originated anyway. The armorial itself is carved in what appears to be Purbeck Marble (full of Viviparus) and that doubtless explains why it is also very badly weathered – 400+ years on an exterior coastal wall
would not be an ideal survival location for a Purbeck Marble sculpture! I hadn’t twigged its identity (it’s high on a wall) until I saw a close up photo of the cleaned stone recently but the delaminated edge of the ‘drip moulding’ above it had suggested Purbeck
to me some years ago. I still fancy a Purbeck origin for this stone but I don’t know enough about other lithologies, apart from the well-known marble. I seem to remember that the yellowed surface ‘crust’ is fairly typical of the group and clearly this is full
of organic laminations which might perhaps be of vegetable origin?
Any ideas would be most welcome!
Cheers
Alan
Alan Howell
Curator Advisor (Natural History)
DDI +44 (0) 1481 709736
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