{"id":2909,"date":"2011-09-27T22:43:19","date_gmt":"2011-09-27T22:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/?p=2909"},"modified":"2013-11-05T11:43:03","modified_gmt":"2013-11-05T18:43:03","slug":"historic-english-limestones-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/history\/2011\/historic-english-limestones-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Historic English Limestones"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Some\u00a0of the\u00a0most historically important building stones come from a group of limestone layers\u00a0deposited during the latter part of the Jurassic\u00a0period (145 – 200\u00a0million years\u00a0ago) in what is now central England.\u00a0\u00a0These Jurassic limestones crop out in a\u00a0narrow swath from the English Channel northeastward to the North Sea.\u00a0 They range from softer honey-colored limestones in the Cotswolds to the harder gray Portland limestone on the south coast.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Cotswolds<\/a>\u00a0are a beautiful region of rolling hills where honey-colored\u00a0Jurassic limestones have been quarried and used as building stone for millenia.\u00a0\u00a0From the 1200’s\u00a0through the 1800’s, Cotswolds merchants became weathly in the wool trade\u00a0for which this region\u00a0was famous.\u00a0\u00a0This wealth built the quintessentially English\u00a0stone villages in the Cotswolds.<\/p>\n

During the Roman occupation of Britain in the first century A.D., these same Jurassic limestones,\u00a0quarried near Bath, England, were used\u00a0to build the\u00a0famous Roman baths and temples around a warm spring that was\u00a0thought to provide health benefits.\u00a0 They were also used\u00a0to build\u00a0churches, abbeys and countless other structures in the World Heritage City of Bath.<\/p>\n

Portland\u00a0Stone is another Jurassic limestone quarried\u00a0on the Isle of Portland in Dorset on\u00a0the English Channel.\u00a0 It is light gray\u00a0and harder than the honey-colored Jurassic limestones to the north.\u00a0 Portland Stone\u00a0is considered a “freestone,” meaning it can be worked in all directions.\u00a0 This property\u00a0makes it an excellent building material.\u00a0 Portland Stone has been used throughout the British Isles and\u00a0the world,\u00a0including in Buckingham Palace and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London\u00a0and in the United Nations building in New York.<\/p>\n

Photos from top:\u00a0Outcrop area of Jurassic limestones in England;\u00a0Limestone house in Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds;\u00a0Roman baths built from Jurassic limestones in Bath, England; Buckingham Palace in London, built from Portland limestone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

England contains some of the most historically interesting limestones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-stone-facts"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Jurassic-England-3.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2909"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7317,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2909\/revisions\/7317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}