Purbeck Stone: your responses

["Dr. Tim Palmer" <tjp@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Many thanks to all of you who have responded, either on or off line, to the
Purbeck article and to the idea of my getting some of the other Stone
articles onto a web page.  I shall try and do this in the new year, as soon
as my job allows (beginning of the year is always a hectic time).  To start
with I shall merely scan the published articles; later I will rewrite them
and add a few more pictures.

In response to a couple of the points raised by people, I have so far only
covered English stones, though there was a brief article on Slate
(reprinted in the 2001 Stone Directory).  I have not yet covered any
Scottish stones, though Caithness Flagstone (not a slate, but a thin-bedded
siltstone / fine sandstone) is top of the list to do from Scotland.  I
prefer only to write about stones that I have met in their home
environments, so Caithness will have to wait until I am next up there
(though I did do a comparison of Anstrude Roche Claire, from Burgundy, and
Portland after the big row over the British Museum Court).

I'm not involved with a national register of Stone (or if I am it's news to
me; here was a limestone initiative about 3 years ago that suddenly went
quiet...!), so I would not presume to tell people what uses different
stones should be put to unless they specifically asked me.  I am happy to
answer general questions on Stone if:

a) they come by email, and
b) I'm allowed to say 'I don't know' when I don't know.

I'll respond to people who have offered web space shortly.  In the
meanwhile, best wishes for Christmas and the New Year.

Tim

Tim Palmer