Community association takes a tour of Belshaw’s Quarry

LAST Saturday saw Whitemountain and District Community Association host their first outdoor event, with Belshaw’s Quarry being the focus of attention when Ian Enlander, from the Geology section at Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA), conducted a tour of the unique site for local residents.

They spent over two hours exploring some of the features of the site that has made it a National Nature Reserve, including very visible signs of a fault line in one of the Earth’s plates, geological features which spanned three major periods in the Earth’s ‘life’ and some detailed evidence of different types of volcanic activity many millions of years back.

Afterwards, chairperson of the association, John Belshaw, commented: “Residents who have lived in the area for many years were genuinely amazed to hear about how many different geological features there are at the site.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

He went on: “Ian clearly knows his geological features but what added to his talk was the way he could connect the different time periods by referencing different major changes in life forms on earth like the rise and fall of dinosaur and even the major shifts in weather patterns.

“Little did we realise that the limestone, or chalk, in the area was so high a quality and when one realises the size of the microscopic life that actually made up the limestone then it’s staggering to think of the billions and billions of these creatures that eventually led to the formation of such rocks.

“However, Ian also learned something about a now buried feature of the site that he had never heard before so it will be interesting if that gets followed up as the quarry could still be hiding a very significant feature that might really add to the geological interest of the site.

“We will be adding some details on the location to our web site www.whitemountain.org.uk and we would really like to hear from the older generation who might have worked in the quarry as their stories could add a human slant to the reserve,” he concluded.