West Harnham Chalk Pit

Also within

Wiltshire County

Condition (Natural England)

Geology & landscape

Mining / Industrial: Quarry · Rock Type: Chalk

Description

Area, 2.8 ha. 6.9 ac. Description A disused quarry, with a high and impressive north facing rock wall, which provides good and important exposures of the Chalk. The site is of great stratigraphic importance in the Campanian Chalk of Wiltshire. It displays very clearly the Offaster pilula zone of the Chalk, defined by the abundant occurrence of the fossil sea urchin Offaster pilula. The quarry is also the probable source of many of the fossils contained within the important Blackmore Collection, now housed at the British Museum Natural History. Blackmore was a Salisbury doctor who amassed a large collection of fossils from the Chalk of this area in the latter part of the nineteenth century and his collection is now a valuable part of the national reference collection. The exposures also continue upwards from the pilula Zoneinto Chalk of the Gonioteuthis quadrata Zone, named after a fossil belemnite, this Chalk being both well exposed and fossiliferous. The fact that good exposure exists above and below the pilulaquadrata zonal boundary makes this site a locality of great stratigraphic value.