To most people, rocks are just...well...stones. To others, they are rather more than that. Being a geologist, I might be forgiven for the occasional bout of enthusiasm for them. But here, on the North Yorkshire coast, geology has played such a blinding hand that it's impossible to put a lid on it.
Walking along the shore, you could miss them. Just a load of greyish, layered rocks. Look closer though, and there are signs of life. A lot of life. Ammonites, hermetically sealed in nodules that fall out of the cliffs during storms. Worm burrows, shells, dinosaurs and unrecognisable creatures living and dying before our time. Even wood fragments playing host to life on a vanished, yet once bobbing tropical blue sea.
Papal Alchemy
A fossil hunter’s paradise, maybe, but there’s a more recent human past that could only have happened here. Back in the 1500’s, the Pope had a monopoly on the crystals of alum (aluminium sulphate, amongst other compounds) which were used to fix coloured dyes to wool. This was big business. Eventually, the secret to making the little white crystals was smuggled from Rome to Northern England, where the right rocks to make it could be found.
What amazes me is how the extraordinary complex chemical extraction processes involved were ever figured out in the first place. I mean. Who would think to burn a load of Jurassic rocks in a big pile for an entire year, then add urine or seaweed to them before liquefying the extracts in tanks and carrying out more bizarre chemical reactions involving (can you believe it) eggs? It is staggering to think that they did all this without really knowing how or why it worked.
The processes are one thing, but the quantities involved were gargantuan. There are great gouges cut out of the hillsides where the Alum Shales were quarried. Then there’s the seaweed, which again was required in such quantities that the entire coastline of the north of England and Scotland was being scraped by men, women and children. And the urine? Shipped in by the boat-load from London and Newcastle. I can’t imagine.
The Hunt for the Missing Universe
The rocks around here are amazing for another reason too. As luck would have it, not only are the rocks well below ground economically important, but the resulting underground mines are so deep that they are perfectly shielded from atmospheric radiation. The rocks also happen to have such low background radiation that it is the perfect place to detect what could be described as the ‘Physics of the Elephant in the room’- the search for dark matter in our universe.
There are 3 million pounds-worth of detectors down there, all waiting for the weakly interacting massive particles to give off a hint of their presence. Rolling an ammonite fossil around in my hand, I can’t help but think this place has come a long way through time.
So what’s that got to do with the price of fish?
Good question….
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