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Clunch is a traditional building material of chalky limestone rock used mainly in eastern England and Normandy. Clunch distinguishes itself from archetypal forms of limestone by being softer in character when cut, and may resemble chalk in lower density, or with minor clay-like components.
Clunch has been used in a wide variety of shapes such as irregular lumps picked from the topsoil of certain fields, or more commonly blocks quarried by being cut from the bedrock in regular-shaped (ashlar) building blocks. If in the first form it can be bedded in a ramshackle manner (as rubble masonry); if in the second then laid in courses. In either case, mortar is often used between stones to form walls.
The stone is a chalk from the Lower Chalk of the Cretaceous age, the period of geological time approximately 145–66 million years ago. It is greyish-white to light beige in colour, often with a greenish tinge. The latter is caused by the presence of glauconite, the potassium and iron aluminium silicate mineral that is also found in Kentish Ragstone. [1] The stone has a gritty texture because of the frequent presence of shell fossils. This stone has been quarried at Totternhoe Quarry in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, by H. G. Clarke & Son since 1920. [2]
It is particularly soft when quarried and subject to chemical and wind erosion as exposed material, i.e. when unrendered in paint, stucco or cement. It can be cut by a saw when in its softer state; when it has been quarried out of the ground it still contains a large amount of water. [3] When the stone dries out it becomes harder, and is not as easy to cut.
Clunch is generically a soft limestone. It can be rich in iron-bearing clays or be very fine and white – in effect just chalk. It is used in various parts of East Anglia, where more durable stone is uncommon, and can be seen frequently in and around Thetford – mostly now for property boundary walls as it is not a long-lasting material, but it is also used for some building walls, especially in traditional agricultural buildings.
In Ely Cathedral it can be seen in some interior locations. The nearby village of Burwell has its civil parish magazine named after the building material. [4] It is found in the village of Seale in Surrey and in Farnham. [5]
The term has been sometimes used more generically, in other parts of England for any soft and aggregate-based vernacular building stone that has been used as a cheaper, inferior substitute for stronger stone.
Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Historically, flint was widely used to make stone tools and start fires.
Marble has been the preferred material for stone monumental sculpture since ancient times, with several advantages over its more common geological "parent" limestone, in particular the ability to absorb light a small distance into the surface before refracting it in subsurface scattering. This gives an attractive soft appearance which is especially good for representing human skin, and which can also be polished.
A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to manage their safety risks and reduce their environmental impact.
Stonemasonry or stonecraft is the creation of buildings, structures, and sculpture using stone as the primary material. Stonemasonry is the craft of shaping and arranging stones, often together with mortar and even the ancient lime mortar, to wall or cover formed structures.
Portland stone is a limestone geological formation dating to the Tithonian age of the Late Jurassic that is quarried on the Isle of Portland in Dorset, England. The quarries are cut in beds of white-grey limestone separated by chert beds. It has been used extensively as a building stone throughout the British Isles, notably in major public buildings in London such as St Paul's Cathedral and Buckingham Palace. Portland stone is also exported to many countries, being used for example at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.
Earth materials include minerals, rocks, soil and water. These are the naturally occurring materials found on Earth that constitute the raw materials upon which our global society exists. Earth materials are vital resources that provide the basic components for life, agriculture and industry.
Plaster is a building material used for the protective or decorative coating of walls and ceilings and for moulding and casting decorative elements. In English, "plaster" usually means a material used for the interiors of buildings, while "render" commonly refers to external applications. The term stucco refers to plasterwork that is worked in some way to produce relief decoration, rather than flat surfaces.
Stone carving is an activity where pieces of rough natural stone are shaped by the controlled removal of stone. Owing to the permanence of the material, stone work has survived which was created during our prehistory or past time.
Dorset is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. Covering an area of 2,653 square kilometres (1,024 sq mi); it borders Devon to the west, Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north-east, and Hampshire to the east. The great variation in its landscape owes much to the underlying geology, which includes an almost unbroken sequence of rocks from 200 to 40 million years ago (Mya) and superficial deposits from 2 Mya to the present. In general, the oldest rocks appear in the far west of the county, with the most recent (Eocene) in the far east. Jurassic rocks also underlie the Blackmore Vale and comprise much of the coastal cliff in the west and south of the county; although younger Cretaceous rocks crown some of the highpoints in the west, they are mainly to be found in the centre and east of the county.
Natural building or ecological building is a discipline within the more comprehensive scope of green building, sustainable architecture as well as sustainable and ecological design that promotes the construction of buildings using sustainable processes and locally available natural materials.
Caen stone is a light creamy-yellow Jurassic limestone quarried in north-western France near the city of Caen. The limestone is a fine grained oolitic limestone formed in shallow water lagoons in the Bathonian Age about 167 million years ago. The stone is homogeneous, and therefore suitable for carving.
Lime is an inorganic material composed primarily of calcium oxides and hydroxides. It is also the name for calcium oxide which occurs as a product of coal-seam fires and in altered limestone xenoliths in volcanic ejecta. The International Mineralogical Association recognizes lime as a mineral with the chemical formula of CaO. The word lime originates with its earliest use as building mortar and has the sense of sticking or adhering.
Lime mortar or torching is a masonry mortar composed of lime and an aggregate such as sand, mixed with water. It is one of the oldest known types of mortar, used in ancient Rome and Greece, when it largely replaced the clay and gypsum mortars common to ancient Egyptian construction.
Jerusalem stone is a name applied to various types of pale limestone, dolomite and dolomitic limestone, common in and around Jerusalem that have been used in building since ancient times. One of these limestones, meleke, has been used in many of the region's most celebrated structures, including the Western Wall.
Totternhoe Stone is a relatively hard chalk outcropping in the middle of the Lower Chalk in the Chiltern Hills in Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire, England. Geologically, it is located in the upper part of the Cenomanian stage of the Cretaceous.
Meleke, also transliterated melekeh or malaki, is a lithologic type of white, coarsely-crystalline, thickly bedded-limestone found in the Judaean Mountains in Israel. It has been used in the traditional architecture of Jerusalem since ancient times, especially in Herodian architecture. Though it is often popularly referred to as Jerusalem stone, that phrase can refer to a number of different types of stone found and used in or associated with Jerusalem.
Dorset is a county located in the middle of the south coast of England. It lies between the latitudes 50.512°N and 51.081°N and the longitudes 1.682°W and 2.958°W, and occupies an area of 2,653 km2. It spans 90 kilometres (56 mi) from east to west and 63 kilometres (39 mi) from north to south.
Fencepost limestone, Post Rock limestone, or Stone Post is a stone bed in the Great Plains notable for its historic use as fencing and construction material in north-central Kansas resulting in unique cultural expression. The source of this stone is the topmost layer of the Greenhorn Limestone formation. It is a regional marker bed as well as a valued construction material of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Kansas. This stone was very suitable for early construction in treeless settlements and it adds a notable rust orange tint to the region's many historic stone buildings. But the most famous use is seen in the countless miles of stone posts lining country roads and highways. This status gives rise to such regional appellations as Stone Post Country, Post Rock Scenic Byway, and The Post Rock Capital of Kansas. This rustic quality finds Fencepost limestone still used in Kansas landscaping today.