An interesting find from Cholderton estate, c 10 km east of Stonehenge. Ixer has analysed the boulder, and says it is a Blue Pennant Sandstone. That means it has probably come from the west. How it got here is somewhat puzzling.......
This video is breathless, chaotic and excitable, but contained within it there is some useful info........
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsfyGvXWHPs
I call it an erratic, because that is what it clearly is -- an unexpected boulder found in a place far removed from its place or origin. I don't say it is a glacial erratic, in the absence of any supporting evidence, but you never know........
Ixer's notes on the boulder will no doubt appear somewhere or other.
4 comments:
Naturalist Chris Packham says the Cholderton estate by its biodiversity is " better than the AONBs next door". Perhaps we on this blogsite should ask the owners of the Cholderton estate to have a watching brief for MORE erratics. By the way, apparently there is a bluestone erratic that was found a mile or so south - east of Stonehenge which is within Salisbury museum, probably in its store. We discussed its existence a while ago.
In your Post of 5th October 2022 you state " Pennant Sandstone (?) " as being number 46 out of " 46 rock types and still counting" found within the Stonehenge landscape.
I recall a geologist saying to me that there are bits of blue Pennant sandstone all over Salisbury Plain. It's assumed that most of it was brought in for building purposes not so long ago - but assumptions are all too common nowadays.......
This is what C P Green said in "The Provenance of Rocks used in the Construction of Stonehenge" , Proceedings of the , British Academy, 1997.
"Foundations and Tools"
In addition to the stones forming the visible monument at Stonehenge, rock was used in construction to wedge the upright stones firmly in their holes. Numerous sarsen blocks were employed for this purpose, BUT ALSO blocks of Chilmark ragstone of Portlandian age and.....These rock types have their nearest outcrop a distance of some 20 I'm to the south [west] of Stonehenge, in the Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous formations of the Vale of Wardour ( Figure 1)....
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