Barite with Dolomite

specimen number:
1471054

location:
Frizington, Cumbria, England, UK

description:

A gorgeous classic old time British specimen with blue glassy mostly gemmy crystals of barite measuring to 13.5 cm in size forming a matrix less cluster with crystals of small white dolomite scattered throughout. This is in remarkably good condition. The specimen comes with an antique label as shown at the end of the video. The label dates the specimen prior to 1908. The specimen comes with a custom acrylic display base.  Ex Otto Gruson collection.

The Frizington mineral district, situated within the West Cumberland iron ore field of Cumbria, England, is a globally renowned historic locality celebrated for producing spectacular nineteenth-century barite specimens that feature exceptionally sharp, highly lustrous, and beautifully varied tabular or prismatic crystals. Geologically, these barium sulfate deposits are hosted within heavily faulted Carboniferous-age Limestone strata that underwent extensive karstic dissolution, creating an interconnected network of large solution cavities and open pockets. High-temperature, barium-rich hydrothermal fluids circulating through these structural fractures during periods of regional rifting slowly precipitated the minerals, allowing massive, water-clear, amber, or sky-blue barite crystals to grow undisturbed inside the low-pressure open voids, frequently in close association with hematite, fluorite, and calcite. Historically, organized underground shaft mining in the Frizington area escalated dramatically between the 1840s and the 1890s to extract high-grade iron ore for Britain's booming industrial revolution, with prolific operations like the Parkside, Mowbray, and Frizington Parks mines cutting directly through these rich mineralized pockets. As the primary hematite ore bodies neared exhaustion, these deep underground operations systematically wound down, leading to the permanent abandonment and flooding of nearly all the classic Frizington shafts by the early twentieth century.

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