Igneous rocks (lava and volcanic ashes) are extruded nearby, having risen to the surface along the faults. Basin extension continues and carbonate sediments and reefs build on basinal highs, maintained by the sliding and rotation of the crustal blocks. The crust is stretched and extensional basins form by faulting. The Oxford Museum of Natural History’s (1861) ground floor and first floor arcades are supported by a whole collection of British ornamental stone shafts, including Devonshire examples.įigure 3 (right): The sedimentary and tectonic evolution of the South Devon Basin. John’s College Chapel, Cambridge (1869), using granite, serpentine, Irish and Devonshire marble. George Gilbert Scott brought together all his favourite British ornamental stones in a single building at St. Much of the British and foreign competition faced by Devonshire marble is well documented by Monica Price 2, and sadly, for many of these marbles (especially Devonshire ones) the best outcrops are now the buildings they adorn, the marbles characteristically rich in fossils, often veined and stylolitised. Thanks to Trevor Ford and others 1 we know a lot about the Derbyshire industry, but of the Devonshire one precious little is recorded. While Devonshire marble shafts and panels became standard finery in Gothic Revival buildings, these artefacts became mansion ‘must-haves’, in direct competition with a very similar stone-inlay industry in Derbyshire. Produced from the same marble works in Plymouth and Torquay, south Devon (Fig.1) were vases, tazzas, inlaid desk sets, dressing-table sets and some magnificent stone-inlay specimen marble tables.
The original north-south extent if the South Devon Basin was far greater than this and no attempt is made to restore basins to their original dimensions. Outlines are based on present day outcrop. Devonshire marbles are in Melbourne Cathedral.įigure 2.The Devonian seas of South Devon. There may be North American, South African and Pacific examples.
We can now ‘map’ more than 70 buildings up and down Britain, and a few more abroad, with significant examples of Devonshire. Their ‘Britishness’ was branded on them by the great Victorian architect George Gilbert Scott when he used them in his Foreign Office building (1861-75) on Whitehall. Courtesy, Southwest Regional Coastal Monitoring Programme.ĭevonshire marbles tell a great story, geologically and historically. The limestones were quarried into the 1950s, barely stopping short of the Napoleonic fortress at the top. Their colour and diversity brought them to prominence in the Victorian era, fully at ease in aesthetic competition with foreign rivals, and yet in the 20 th Century they slipped into obscurity and are now probably the least recognisable of all widely-used ornamental stones.įigure 1. Perhaps our difficulty is that we see so much in a polished stone, yet often have no idea where the stone is from. Geologists tend to overlook ornamental stone, but all of geology can be there - sometimes at its most challenging. Gordon Walkden tells the story of a long-forgotten but quite exceptional range of ornamental marbles.