The Red Hole, Hollington
My squelchy summer fieldwork continues with a visit to the Red Hole Quarry at Hollington, Staffordshire. Hollington Stone is Staffordshire’s most important building stone and has been used for many important buildings around the county including Lichfield Cathedral. It is Lower Triassic in age and at the same stratigraphic level as the Grinshill Stone I looked at in a previous post.
Like the Grinshill Stone, Hollington Stone comes in cream and red varieties, the cream being where fluids have leached the red iron staining. However, where as most of the current Grinshill extraction is cream stone, most of the current Hollington is Red
Hollington White and Red
The cut blocks of Hollington red were difficult to photograph because of the awful weather. Although the wet brought out the colours, it also produced a reflective sheen causing unwanted reflections. Here are some of the better attempts but even these have had to be enhanced.
Hollington Red
Hollington Red
Anyone want to explain the bedding in this block?
Hollington Red
Thanks to the quarry operators, Staffordshire Stone Ltd. for the visit.
RE the bedding in the lower picture.
Interesting problem. From the pic the LHS looks like aeolian grainflow laminae. The slightly curved nature of the laminae and the wedging of the coarser bands suggests we are near the toe of the dune and it’s a rather oblique cut
The RHS as the appearence of a sabkha or damp sand flat with lenses of coarser sand in a wavy, dark silty matrix.
The nature of the contact is clearly the challange, its either a fault (unlikely) or the edge of a soft sediment injection feature, which is my best guess.
So I suggest that the stuff on the RHS is sabkha that has been remobilsed as an injectite.
Knowing the context, relation to regional bedding etc would also help…
Cheers
John
Thanks for the comment John. There is certainly some soft sediment deformation and injection like structures in some of the other blocks – but as you say, without context it is difficult to work out what is going on
[...] problem is the extension is being built from Hollington Mottled Stone. I’ve discussed the Hollington Stone before, it is a Lower Triassic sandstone and looks like this – spot the [...]