Albion Stone brings a new bed of Portland Stone to the market

31/07/2018 • News

Albion Stone is pleased to be able to offer an exceptional new bed of Portland Stone to the market: ‘Ostrea Patch Reef Whitbed’.

This is an option for discerning clients who may wish to incorporate some of this distinctive stone into their projects to provide that unique feature.

Portland Stone was laid down at the end of the Jurassic Period, under sub-tropical conditions on the floor of the long-since-vanished Tethys Ocean. Life teemed in the warm, clear tidal waters. Colourful fish swam over a sea floor littered with exotic molluscs. Here and there, oysters, bryozoans and the red algae Solenopora clustered together in vibrant symbiotic communities, forming small, isolated reefs on the sea floor.

These patch reefs eventually became entombed beneath younger marine sediments. During the eons of geological time which have passed since their formation, the reefs have become ‘frozen’ as occasional isolated features within Portland freestone beds.

Sections from these incredibly enigmatic fossil reefs occasionally turn-up in blocks of Whitbed extracted by Albion Stone.

Fortunately, careful cutting and finishing of these special blocks, using the very latest stone processing technology available to the Company, can once-more reveal the full and intricate beauty of these unusual and geologically important, pre-historic reefs to the World.  

Albion Stone, a fourth generation family business pride ourselves on having a helpful and skilled workforce as well as modern and traditional manufacturing process to enable us to produce the highest quality Portland Stone with minimal environmental impact.