4/16/2023 0 Comments Oolite stone wallAs a result, the Cotswolds have more protected or 'listed' buildings than any other region in the country.With rock visible everywhere that man trod, and in a landscape to some extent denuded of trees due to the vast herds of sheep that grazed the hills, it was natural to start building with it in the Middle Ages. To pass through these villages on a sunny day in May is to enter a world that seems to have been fabricated for a fairy-story. The effect, particularly in the north, is mesmerising. In much of the northern part of the Cotswolds the stone is a rich honey colour, which, as you go south towards Bath, becomes creamier and greyer. The colour of the stone varies according to where it was quarried. Strong currents wash this seed around on the bottom where it accumulates a layer of calcite from the supersaturated water, and is bound together with countless numbers of other oolites to produce the golden, workable rock that in the Cotswolds is everywhere beneath one's feet. Formation begins with a seed, perhaps a shell fragment. Like most other sedimentary rocks, limestone is usually composed of sand-sized grains (or 'oolites'), most of which are skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral. The stone in question is Oolitic Limestone, formed during the Jurassic period (206 to 144 million years ago), when what are now the Cotswolds were covered in a warm sea. If the wool trade was to a great extent responsible for the prosperity of the Cotswolds, its character is a result of an abundance of stone. Even when the sun is obscured and the light is cold, these walls are still faintly warm and luminous, as if they knew the trick of keeping the lost sunlight of centuries glimmering about them." Priestley wrote of Cotswold stone that - "the truth is that it has no colour that can be described.
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