Here's something fun...

[cotedupy]

I was standing around in the garden of my folks' new house earlier today, catching some rays with my coticule, and noticed something interesting looking in the corner of my eye. Are you seeing what I'm seeing...?

This right here is pretty unmistakeably a large piece of green novaculite:

And unless there's some very local deposit that hasn't been documented, I'd be reasonably sure it's Welsh, i.e. something that we might now call 'Llyn Idwal' or 'Cambrian Green'. Unfortunately that rock is pretty set in the wall (atm ), so just a couple of chunks for now to have a look.

I'm actually pretty tempted to try to get that stone out of the wall somehow as these little pieces are exceptionally consistent and fine-grained. Probably in fact too fine for anyone to want as a whetstone back in the day, but it'd be utterly superb for razor honing.

 

[Bowmaker]

If it is Welsh why would that stone be imported there or carried any distance? Just playing devils advocate because I have no idea how far you are from a known source.
Any way it stands out like a sore thumb in the wall, I think you would be doing your folks a solid by replacing it.

 

[cotedupy]

If it is Welsh why would that stone be imported there or carried any distance? Just playing devils advocate because I have no idea how far you are from a known source.
Any way it stands out like a sore thumb in the wall, I think you would be doing your folks a solid by replacing it.

Ah, now I'm glad you asked B!

During the c.18th and c.19th Wales was probably the largest producer of building stone in the world. Welsh slate was exported to all corners of the empire, including extensively to the US. Though perhaps the most famous export of Welsh stone to elsewhere occurred considerably earlier... a good number of 4 metre, 25 ton slabs of Pembrokeshire bluestone were transported (somehow) over 150 miles to Wiltshire some 4000 years ago, in order to construct Stonehenge.

(But yeah also - their house is in Devon which is quite close to Wales, just across the Severn estuary.)

 

[Bowmaker]

Ah, now I'm glad you asked B!

During the c.18th and c.19th Wales was probably the largest producer of building stone in the world. Welsh slate was exported to all corners of the empire, including extensively to the US. Though perhaps the most famous export of Welsh stone to elsewhere occurred considerably earlier... a good number of 4 metre, 25 ton slabs of Pembrokeshire bluestone were transported (somehow) over 150 miles to Wiltshire some 4000 years ago, in order to construct Stonehenge.

(But yeah also - their house is in Devon which is quite close to Wales, just across the Severn estuary.)

Surly there must be more of it close by, even if it is not sourced in the immediate vicinity.

I'm one of those geeks that loved that old British TV show "Time Team". It seems that it was a common practice to rob older structures to build new ones, reusing the materials over and over again. Just throwing that out there.

 

[taffy]

Perhaps you should get that stone out and send it back where it came from

 

[Matt O]

I am a break out the sledge hammer type of guy! HOOAH!

 

[musicman980]

Very cool! How did you figure it was novaculite? What are the tell-tale signs?

 

[SilverGeezer]

Don't do it man, you've crossed the line.

 

[Mr Kooby Shemayrew]

I am a break out the sledge hammer type of guy! HOOAH!

Time to get a shovel. He’s probably sitting on the next great novaculite quarry.

 

[cotedupy]

Surly there must be more of it close by, even if it is not sourced in the immediate vicinity.

I'm one of those geeks that loved that old British TV show "Time Team". It seems that it was a common practice to rob older structures to build new ones, reusing the materials over and over again. Just throwing that out there.

That's an interesting point. I'll certainly be looking more closely at the other buildings around here tomorrow. See if I can steal a bit of someone else's wall instead...

Very cool! How did you figure it was novaculite? What are the tell-tale signs?

Just kinda because I've had a lot of Idwals and Charns which often have chips or breaks, so I know what it looks and feels like. In particular the way that it fractures or flakes is quite distinctive. There are some bits of green slate in other parts of the garden wall which look similar-ish, but they're much less hard obviously. So a combination of those two things.

It is possible that it could be a local novaculite, which would be very cool, but I've read quite a lot of geological reports and papers about Dartmoor and Devon, done a fair bit of 'on the ground' searching, and not seen or come across mention of anything that could be.

Charnley stone wasn't really quarried for building on a particularly large scale outside of the local area afaik, so I'd be fairly confident this'll be Welsh. (Also looks more like Idwal rock than Charnley).

 

[Matt O]

Have sledge hammer…will travel….

 

[Frinstance]

"And the walls came crumblin-tumblin..."

 

[rbscebu]

I knew I should have taken my geology classes in high school more seriously. Who would have thought to he would need that information later in life.

 

[taffy]

I knew I should have taken my geology classes in high school more seriously. Who would have thought to he would need that information later in life.

You should have learned building skills, think of all the work you could pick up following cotedupy around after he has been removing all these stones from people's houses

 

[Legion]

I'm imagining the wailing that would happen in Australia if someone even thought about pulling a stone out of a 100+ year old buildings wall. Heritage listing, heritage listing!!!

 

[Bevel]

Please pass on my condolences to your parents that that structurally unsound wall will have to come down.

 

[rbscebu]

Please pass on my condolences to your parents that that structurally unsound wall will have to come down.

My understanding is that the wall was erected without all of the correct building permit.

 

[cotedupy]

I'm imagining the wailing that would happen in Australia if someone even thought about pulling a stone out of a 100+ year old buildings wall. Heritage listing, heritage listing!!!

It is actually a grade two listed house I’m told. But as @Bevel and @Bowmaker have so correctly pointed out - the wall is very obviously an acute safety hazard, and the green stone a non-original, foreign interloper anyway!

 

[cotedupy]

Very cool! How did you figure it was novaculite? What are the tell-tale signs?

Here’s a closer pic of the reason why, even from across the garden and before I’d felt the stone, I was pretty certain it was novaculite:

While the fissile flakiness or cleavage is something that happens with slates too, these parts I’ve circled don’t really. It’s called conchoidal fracture
and is quite a distinctive break character of very hard or glassy stones; cherts, novaculites, obsidian &c.

The shape is elliptical or semi-circular, the word ‘conchoid’ coming from the Ancient Greek for mussels. And exactly the same as what people sometimes now call ‘scalloping’ on Hard Arks that have been glued into the box and then forcibly removed leaving part of the stone still attached, and a bivalve-shaped hole on the underside.

 

[rideon66]

Charnley stone wasn't really quarried for building on a particularly large scale outside of the local area afaik, so I'd be fairly confident this'll be Welsh. (Also looks more like Idwal rock than Charnley).

Maybe not usually, but if you read G&H the entire house and barn was built of CF Stone on the quarry property.