ALUM BAY SANDSTONE - Isle of Wight

ALUM BAY SANDSTONE

Alum Bay, Isle of Wight

An attractive example of the well known coloured sands from Alum Bay. It's reasonably well consolidated but it's very sandy and sheds sand grains as it's handled.  For the collector - not really suitable for the mantlepiece!

The colours of the Alum Bay sands are entirely natural and are mostly due to compounds of iron. The sands in the cliffs are part of the Bracklesham Beds and were laid down on a sea floor about 40 million years ago. Subsequent pressure imposed on the Earth’s crust by the formation of the Alps has pushed the entire sequence of rocks into a vertical position, thus enabling visitors to walk along the beach and therefore forwards or backwards in time.

Note: This example was collected in the 1970s and is from an old collection. Collecting sand from Alum Bay is no longer permitted.