On a recent visit to Lincolnshire, Sherds encountered an unusual group of churches, all of them built of a stone that comes from the more colourful end of the Munsell Colour Chart. For those not familiar with this essential archaeological tool, it consists of swatches that you can use to match and describe soil and stone colours, most of which are drab variations of brown and grey. Towards the end of the chart there are all the colours of the rainbow. Surely no stone is really that colour, one might think, but many of the churches around Spilsby, Lincolnshire, are built from locally quarried green sandstone that has the moss-green colour of florists’ oasis (below).
Like an oasis, Spilsby sandstone also tends to soak up moisture and to erode as a result of frost and rain. The churchwardens I spoke to said it was very difficult to repair. This is confirmed by the newly published Historic England database of historic building stone, which bluntly states that Spilsby sandstone ‘can weather badly’.
The Building Stones of England database is an online searchable tool compiled to help building conservation professionals find the materials they need for repairing historic buildings. Just under half of all listed buildings in England are constructed from stone, and it is a key material in many hundreds of thousands of unlisted buildings and structures in conservation areas, national parks, and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Suitable stone to repair them is often difficult to source, so the database, which lists more than 4,000 indigenous stone types, also pinpoints the quarries that are still in production, with the aim of empowering the Mineral Planning Authorities to protect them. To accompany the database, 45 illustrated guides highlight the distinctive stone buildings and geology that are characteristic of their regions.
