Stone Case Contents

Agate is a Silicate from the Quartz group. It is translucent, with bands of colour created by traces of Iron and Manganese. It is prized for its decorative properties. Here a pinkish-red variety has been made into stamps with a personal seal and a greenish clouded variety, smoke agate, has been made into beads.

Chinese and Japanese craftsmen were renowned for making small sculptures from hard, translucent rocks.

A soft, crumbly sedimentary rock made from tiny shells of microscopic organisms deposited in the sea. Nodules of flint are found in chalk.

Shows a fossilised sponge inside – a sponge once a living organism that has had its cells replaced by Silica in formation of a flint nodule, later worn to a pebble.
Presented by Colonel C J Cox, 1889

A polished example from Shorncliffe, Folkestone. See 1.

Flint is a Silicate mineral. It is very hard but when chipped has glassy, sharp edges. Hand-axes, hammer stones and blades like those on display in this case were made by Prehistoric hunters, who lived in Britain from about 600,000 to 5,000 years ago. Selecting the best flint and knapping it (hitting one rock against another to chip bits off), to make a range of tools for specific jobs, required very great skill. This ovate axe and pointed axe were both found at Reculver, near Herne Bay in the Canterbury district.

See 1.

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See 1. Quartz crystals can be seen in the flint.

Part of a tree that has had its cells replaced by minerals over millions of years and has become a stone.

Remnant of a ‘pebble’ collected by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert on a visit to Scotland in 1849, which was made into an inkstand to commemorate their visit.

Granite is a very hard igneous stone containing minerals in large crystals, which formed as the molten rock cooled. It occurs in numerous varieties with different compositions of minerals.

Acheulian. See 1.

Made about 1190 by an unknown Medieval sculptor from Caen stone, a fine creamy-coloured sandstone from France that was imported for building Canterbury Cathedral and Canterbury Castle.
From the Faussett collection

Jade is a Silicate mineral. It is very hard and durable, and has been used since ancient times for tools as well as decoration. Some of our examples of tools come from New Zealand, where jade can be found.

Sculptured in marble by John Frend, a Canterbury sculptor. Marble is a metamorphic rock that can take a fine polish.
Purchased with grant-aid from the MGC/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, the Beecroft Bequest and the Friends of Canterbury Museums, 1996

Made of a stone that is hardwearing to continual grinding.

This stone includes the fossil shells of freshwater snails. It was popular for decorative use in buildings and was called marble, although not really marble in the geological sense.

Grains of Silicate minerals.

This is a rock formed from deposited grains of sand. The grains are weakly cemented so the rock breaks easily, making it ideal for quarrying. Local sandstones from the Tertiary age were extensively quarried around Canterbury in the past.

A stone with mineral veins, cut into an obelisk shape.

Found in Canterbury.

Made from a stalagmite – a formation of Calcite minerals deposited by water seeping through rocks and dripping in caves to make stalactites, which hang down, and stalagmites, which build up from cave floors.