Lmst

The joys of 'urban geology': How to find fossils (and other discoveries) in your city's buildings.

If you look closer at the building stones, tiles and pavements of the big city, you can find a hidden world of geology and history, from fascinating fossils to unusual rocks.

https://mediafaro.org/article/20251017-the-joys-of-urban-geology-how-to-find-fossils-and-other-discoveries-in-your-citys-buildings?mf_channel=mastodon&action=forward

#UrbanGeology #Geology #Fossils #Rocks #Cities #PortlandStone #UrbanExploring #London

Waltham Forest Town Hall #London
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#walthamstow #townhall #StrippedClassicism #architecture #architecturephotography #londonborough #localauthority #portlandstone #council #walthamstowtownhall #listedbuilding #Building #City
#nikonz8 #nikon #Nikonphotography

#snap_colours #snap_vip_member #snap_uk #snap_raw #snap_community #snap_kingdom #snap_city #snap_artgallary #snap_challenge #snap_street #snap_community_member #snap_architecture #snap_depthoffield

Glorious day visiting fascinating Portland Bill, Dorset, where ghosts of the former industry of stone quarrying still linger. A huge quay was hewn from the rock that today is steadily falling away. The hoist that once lowered blocks of Portland Stone into vessels below stands rusting but still in use to lower fishing boats into the sea.

#PortlandStone #Dorset

A view out to sea showing a flattish area of stone, once the quay. Two parts of the edge have fallen off into the sea after being undermined by the waves. The sea and the sky are blue.

Looking out from the land to the sea, at the edge is an iron hoist silhouetted against the blue sea.In the foreground is a cliff shaped as a quay in the past but eroded away in places.

A view from the cliff to fishing boats and sheds above. One boat is painted white and the other black with 'Bill Boys' on the side. The sheds are painted different colours. In the forefront is an area covered with patches of low-growing salt-loving plants.

Waltham Forest Town Hall #London
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#walthamstow #townhall #StrippedClassicism #architecture #architecturephotography #londonborough #localauthority #portlandstone #council #sunlight #walthamstowtownhall #landscape #chooselandscape #listedbuilding #weather #summerchallenge #Building #City
#nikonz8 #nikon #Nikonphotography #nikonownermagazine #nikonowner #z8 #fisheyephotography #fisheye

Waltham Forest Town Hall #London
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#walthamstow #townhall #StrippedClassicism #architecture #architecturephotography #londonborough #localauthority #portlandstone #council #sunlight #walthamstowtownhall #landscape #chooselandscape #listedbuilding #weather #summerchallenge #Building #City
#nikonz8 #nikon #Nikonphotography #nikonownermagazine #nikonowner #z8 24-70S

1 across: A red alga playing bridge.

Or at least, the fossil of one - Solenopora - in the Jurassic #PortlandStone parapet of Waterloo Bridge, London.

#FossilFriday #Palaeobotany #UrbanFossils @LondonGeology

The fanlike structure of Solenopora standing out clearly from the grey, weathered Portland Stone it iswas preserved in.

Waltham Forest Town Hall #London
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#walthamstow #townhall #StrippedClassicism #architecture #architecturephotography #londonborough #localauthority #portlandstone #council #sunlight #walthamstowtownhall #landscape #chooselandscape #listedbuilding #weather #summerchallenge #bnw #bnwphotography #monochrome
#nikonz8 #nikon #Nikonphotography #nikonownermagazine #nikonowner #z8 24-70S

You've got to love Roach Stone - it's a facies (variety) of the famous Portland Stone (a Jurassic limestone) that many of the public buildings in London are built from. Christopher Wren made Portland Stone famous when he used it to build the new St Paul's Cathedral in London after the Great Fire. OK, so he had shares in the quarry...

The stone is full of fossil shells - the pointy ones are the famous 'Portland Screws'.

#Geology #UrbanGeology #Limestone #PortlandStone #RoachStone #Jurassic #ChristopherWren #FossilFriday

A slab of creamy-coloured Portland Roachstone with may 'Portland Screw' casts clearly visible.

Graveyard on the dorset island of Portland. Home of #PortlandStone all the monuments are ancient and the place is windswept but because they are made of such strong beautiful stone the intricate carvings and details are intact! This place is eerie even in summer. #graveyardscene #cemeteryLove #islandofportland (locals have an abiding superstition that it's very bad luck to say or write the word "rabbit") #portland #islandlife #KeepPortlandWeird

Windswept graveyard with single tree and a lot of Victorian gravestones. Blue sky

The wave of early #C18 CofE church building in London was propagandistic display that produced astonishing designs by #Hawksmoor and others. It was funded by a tax on #coal increasingly used as fuel and so the white-grey #PortlandStone favoured for these buildings was directly linked to the #Anthropocene -- still, the properties of this stone that show so directly the effects of sunlight are intriguing, as here on Flitcroft's rebuilding of St Giles in the Fields. #architecture

#PortlandStone

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