Get Back to Me

By GetBacktoMe

Pudding or Stone?

My house is full of stones! Every window sill and shelf. Everyone a memory (apart from those I've now forgotten!)

The local speciality is Hertfordshire Pudding Stone there are huge lumps of it strewn all over the garden. In stable wood there are deep pits where the clay and flints were dug for building materials and the pudding stone was left aside.

The aptly named conglomerate looks just like of fashioned plum pudding - hence the name. Its appearance and formation reminds me of nut brittle toffee... Its complicated in geological terms and there is still considerable confusion about where it was formed, as much of the stone had been moved and dumped in this area by the ice sheets and melt water of the last ice age.

This is my explanation:
Flint stones were turned into rounded pebbles by the action of the sea. Sand and silica filled the gaps between, became compressed and heated forming the cement between the pebbles. The Earth's surface moved due to the weight of the ice and other deposits on top of the layer of pudding stone and it snapped and broke into large chunks. Because the silica cement was so strong the pebbles sheared in smooth facets.
The pebbles are like the nuts, the silica cement is the toffee, mmm - perfect!
There is more information on pudding stone here

I love the vivid colours and different sizes of pebbles in this particular example.

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