Cream Block Limestone, Guiting Quarry Gloucestershire

A Cotswold Limestone cream block bed with medium grain texture.

Cotswold Cream Block Limestone is a traditional, warm cream stone with a medium grain texture and some small clusters of interesting shell and fossil.

This bed is capable of producing in excess of 10,000 tonnes of fine masonry quality stone each year in block up to 1.5 metres high and an individual size of up to 10 tonnes.

The size and highly consistent nature of this block means it has a wide variety of interior and exterior uses including windows, chimneys, coping, walling, flooring and fireplaces.

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Guiting Cream Block Limestone Gloucestershire

Petrographic Description and Mineral Examination of our Cream Block Limestone

Guiting Cream Limestone is light cream in colour with occasional patches of pale iron oxide colouration. The principal constituents are well rounded ooliths [typically 1mm in size] which are micritic in nature with some showing crystalline seeds. The ooliths are loosely packed showing minimal compaction distortion. Occasional bioclastic fragments are noted, and all constituents were held within a sparite cement.

In thin section the stone was confirmed as a limestone consisting primarily of ooliths, with these comprising more than 25% of the allchems present. The ooliths were mainly micritic in nature and show a concentric structure centered around fragments of intraclast, fibrous bioclast or quartz grain. Rarely, small concentrations of iron minerals are visible with ooliths, giving rise to a very localised orange discolouration. As well as seeds to ooliths, angular quartz grains are present as discrete grains.

The allochems are generally well sorted and loosely packed, showing minimalinter-particle contact and distortion due to compaction. All particles are well cemented within a sparry calcite cement. Only a few pore spaces are apparent. Based on the mineralogy identified the stone has been giving the classificationof Oolitic Limestone.