Old Red Sandstone
The Old Red Sandstone is a large group of rocks of late Silurian and Devonian age. They were formed in a semi-arid desert environment which has given them their conspicuous red colouring through the intense weathering of iron-bearing minerals. Nevertheless, they are highly variable in outcrop with red, green, purple or brown colourings, coexisting in many cases.
Sandstones, mudstones, calcretes and conglomerates (both pebbly and intraformational) are interbedded with one another as a result of deposition in seasonal, shifting, braided rivers. Sandstones form the best and most widely used building material with calcretes and cornstones generally used only very locally and most likely as a by-product of lime burning.
Generally used quite locally, it is the most important building stone across most of Herefordshire. The variable nature of the stone can give very local character to individual villages.
Particularly notable areas of use include the Golden Valley, the Bromyard Plateau, Ross-on-Wye and the Teme Valley (for instance the village of Clifon upon Teme) however they are extremely ubiquitous across the area of their outcrop.
Browse sites from the database using Old Red Sandstone ->
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- Private Quarters, Goodrich Castle – Brownstones Formation
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- Green Old “Red” Sandstone, Sherford Street, Bromyard – St Maughans Formation
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- Carved Norman doorway, St Peter’s, Bromyard – coarse sandstone from the Raglan Mudstone Formation
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- Dore Abbey, Golden Valley
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Wenlock Limestone
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Old Red Sandstone
The Old Red Sandstone is a large group of rocks of late Silurian and Devonian age. They were formed in a semi-arid desert environment which has given them their conspicuous red colouring through the intense weathering of iron-bearing minerals. Nevertheless, they are highly variable in outcrop with red, green, purple or brown colourings, coexisting in […]