475 million years old
Ancient Rocks
These ‘Bluestone’ rocks are found amongst other exotic stones at Stonehenge. They come from the Preseli Hills, 140 miles away from Sailsbury Plain. So did our ancestors move them 4,500 years ago, or were they carried there by ice sheets 450,000 years ago? The answer is disputed.
Spot the Rock
Spotted Dolerites are igneous rocks that formed inside the Earth’s crust. Magma was pushed between layers of mudstones and slates where it cooled slowly and crystalized. The spots are an intergrowth of quartz and white felspar and probably grew as the the rocks were ‘cooked’, that is metamorphosed, during a period of mountain building.
Healing Lichen
22 lichen species have colonised these rough-surfaced rocks. One of these, known as crottle Parmelia saxatilis, is used as a reddish-brown dye for Harris Tweed. But in Medieval times, it was also used to treat epilepsy, but only when it was found growing on bones. It worked best when taken from the skull of a hanged man – apparently.
Where do the rocks come from? Eastern end of the Preseli Hills, Pembrokeshire
