To promote a wider interest in the science of geology through organised lectures, field excursions and social activities.
To provide a link between the amateur, the student, the teacher and the professional geologist.
To foster interest in geological sites within the area with a view to their study and wise conservation.
To establish and maintain good relations with organisations that have common interests.

 

 
 
 

Some Quarries South of Bristol

Janice Theis

 

2nd April 2005– in bright hot spring sunshine at Lower Flaxton, (sp?) I paid my first quarry visit with WEGA to two quarries on the southern edge of Bristol. There were fifteen of us, and we were escorted around the first quarry by two extremely helpful site employees. Once inside, the quarry appears huge,  and offers a wonderful wildlife habitat – coltsfoot colonising the screes and peregrine falcons wheeling and mewing over the nearby quarry faces. Lithostrotion corals were plentiful, the only complaint being that they were too heavy to carry home. In addition to the corals various brachiopods were seen.

To quote the Bath Geological Society site, Stancombe Quarry works within the Clifton Down Limestones of the Carboniferous Limestone Series. The strata are well jointed and dip north by about 20 degrees (forming the northern limb of the Broadfield Down pericline). In the south of the quarry the Triassic Dolomitic Conglomerate outcrops. The quarry is cut by several E-W trending faults/mineral veins from which small specimens of galena can commonly be found. The quarry itself produces about 1.5 million tonnes of limestone each year most of which goes to produce concrete or building blocks and some of which is used to make asphalt. The quarry opened in the early 1950‘s.

 

After a picnic lunch at Chew Valley Lakes, we set off in the continuing perfect spring weather up to Stowey Quarry, where we parked on the roadside verge and walked down to the quarry bed.

Jurassic Lower Lias ("blue lias") and Rhaetian Stage Triassic ("white lias") limestones are extracted for building and walling stone purposes at Stowey Quarry near Bishop Sutton. An identified workable resource of about 480,000 tonnes of limestone exists on land adjacent to the site.

Various brachiopods, bivalves and ammonites were seen but no one had the confidence or experience to give more particular identifications, although many specimens were collected

 

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