70th Anniversary Field trip -Building Stones tour of Belfast ( members only)

This tour will celebrate the diversity of rocks used as building stones in the City Centre and will take you on a tour of area around the City Hall and will last for approximately 5 hours including lunch.  The first part of the tour will cover that area around the City Hall.  We will observe the built heritage in the city centre which has a range of rocks for example, the Scottish Carboniferous sandstones, English Jurassic limestones through to the Italian marbles used inside the City Hall and a few igneous rocks with spectacular crystal formations and a few xenoliths eg  Larvikite and Peterhead granite

The tour will highlight the work of the Natural Stone Database that was a unique partnership between industry and research in Northern Ireland.  The weblink https://stonedatabase.com/about-stone-database/ shows the range of rocks that have been used and combines the research knowledge of the Stone Weathering Group QUB and Consarc Design Group and is supported by the Environment and Heritage Service. The database helped to identify the rocks and quarries used for buildings and monuments in Northern Ireland and collates key information about the 1800 listed stone buildings and 260 monuments.  We will be looking at a small number of these on the tour and the methods used to assess the stonework.  We will also look at the different ways to classify the rock groups.

If you need to join up our weblink for the membership is https://belfastgeologists.org/index.php/about-us/join-us/

If you are attending this trip let us know by email and contact us on belfastgeolsoc22@gmail.com