A few rocks I've found around the place that don't belong here Granite from road works, this could have come from Cornwall, or maybe Scotland. This comprises of Quartz, Mica and Feldspar. The larger quartz crystal in the middle is called a pegmatite. It's just cooled down over a longer period so it had time to form a bigger crystal. The pinker lump has got more feldspar than the others. Slate from the garden centre This is a metamorphosed mudstone formed during mountain building movements. It splits at 90 degrees to the old bedding planes and is used for roofing a lot. It comes in a few different shades and this one (blue/gray) probably comes from the quarry in Blaenau Ffestiniog in Wales where I used to work as a monumental mason in the 1990's. Larvikite. Used as a costal defence at one of our local beaches.
This is from round here, part of a girt fossil shell that was washed out of the chalk at the beach (It's on a 6 inch floorboard) Although it's Calcium Carbonate like the chalk it's harder and more resistant to erosion. When I used to keep Giant African Land Snails I gave them a girt lump of chalk. They used to eat it to form their shells. They'd eat the chalk away but leave fossils like this one.
