Wenlock Limestone
Pale grey nodular or thinly bedded limestones. In character it varies markedly across the region. Examples from the Malvern Axis hills (Abberley, Suckley etc.), Ledbury and Woolhope Dome can be spectacularly fossiliferous, corresponding to reef bodies. During the Silurian water depth deepened towards open ocean to the west and around Ludlow the Wenlock limestone is […]
Aymestry Limestone
Blue-grey, hard, nodular argillaceous limestone. The presence of the strongly ribbed brachiopod Kirkidium knightii is diagnostic for this formation. Widely used in the Mortimer Forest, Woolhope Dome, Suckley Hills and Ledbury areas. The character of the formation, like most of the Silurian strata, can vary markedly between a massive limestone suitable for dimension stone to […]
Ludlow Shales
Olive-blue-grey calcareous siltstones, silty mudstones and mudstones. From a building-stone perspective a classification for the Silurian strata based on rock type is most appropriate, not least because the best building stone yielded by this ‘series’ – the Aymestry Limestone – is diachronous and, in the north-west part of Herefordshire, tends to be variable in its […]
Downton Castle Sandstone
Thinly bedded yellow-brown or buff micaceous fine-grained sandstone with interbedded brown-grey siltstone and mudstone. The narrow bedding make the sandstone bands an excellent tilestone and, where the beds are thickest, freestone. In the Mortimer Forest and other areas west of Ludlow, the Downton Castle Sandstone was an important dimension stone for lintels or more important […]
Gorsley Stone
Local variety of Downton Castle Sandstone quarried from Linton Quarry and other smaller working in Gorsley, SE Herefordshire. The historic buildings of Gorsley village are almost all built from this stone. In comparison to varieties elsewhere in the county the Gorsley Stone has less of a greenish tinge and is marked by an attractive pale […]
Raglan Mudstone
Most of the Raglan Mudstone Formation, which underlies the central plain of Herefordshire, consists of red, purple and green mudstones but beds of sandstone occur too and have been widely used for building stone. Sandstones tend to be micaceous and flaggy with multiple colours in a single bed. More unusually, on Bringsty Common a coarse […]
Withington Stone
A pale grey to pink and buff coloured sandstone from a bed within the Raglan Mudstone. A medium to coarse grained (unusually coarse in comparison with much of the formation), current bedded sandstone with thin layers of granules (clasts between sand and pebble grade; about 2-4mm diameter) and small pebbles of yellowy quartzite in it. […]