A survey of building stone and roofing slate in Falkirk town centre Minerals & Waste Programme Open Report OR/13/015 BRITISH GEOLOGICAL SURVEY MINERALS & WASTE PROGRAMME OPEN REPORT OR/13/015 A survey of building stone and roofing slate in Falkirk town The National Grid and other Ordnance Survey data © Crown centre Copyright and database rights 2013. Ordnance Survey Licence No. 100021290. M R Gillespie, P A Everett, L J Albornoz-Parra and E A Tracey Keywords Falkirk, building stone, roofing slate, survey, quarries, stone- matching. Front cover The Steeple, Falkirk town centre. Original early 19th Century masonry of local Falkirk sandstone at middle levels. Lower levels clad in buff sandstone from northern England in late 20th Century. Spire reconstructed in unidentified th sandstone in early 20 Century. Bibliographical reference GILLESPIE, M R, EVERETT, P A, ALBORNOZ-PARRA, L J and TRACEY, E A. 2013. A survey of building stone and roofing slate in Falkirk town centre. British Geological Survey Open Report, OR/13/015. 163pp. Copyright in materials derived from the British Geological Survey’s work is owned by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and/or the authority that commissioned the work. You may not copy or adapt this publication without first obtaining permission. Contact the BGS Intellectual Property Rights Section, British Geological Survey, Keyworth, e-mail [email protected]. You may quote extracts of a reasonable length without prior permission, provided a full acknowledgement is given of the source of the extract. Maps and diagrams in this book use topography based on Ordnance Survey mapping. © NERC 2013. 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Final FIGURES Figure 1 Topographic map of Falkirk area and modern road infrastructure ................................... 1 Figure 2 Topographic map of Falkirk town centre ......................................................................... 2 Figure 3 The major geological terranes and geological faults of Scotland ..................................... 3 Figure 4 Lithostratigraphy for the Falkirk district .......................................................................... 4 Figure 5 Bedrock geology of the Falkirk district ............................................................................ 4 Figure 6 Map of the THI area in Falkirk town centre, and surveyed polygons .............................. 7 Figure 7 Screenshot of the Microsoft Access data entry form designed for the survey ................. 9 Figure 8 Examples of ‘good’ and ‘poor’ visibility in surveyed Falkirk buildings ........................ 12 Figure 9 Distribution of buildings containing natural stone ......................................................... 16 Figure 10 Variation in the level of building stone information available to the surveyor ............ 17 Figure 11 Distribution of buildings with harled or painted street-facing elevations .................... 18 Figure 12 Typical examples of the slates described in Table 5 .................................................... 22 Figure 13 Distribution of buildings containing roofing slate ........................................................ 23 Figure 14 Variation in the level of roofing slate information available to the surveyor ............... 24 Figure 15 Quarries in the Falkirk area that have produced sandstone building stone .................. 26 Figure 16 Transport arteries developed in the 18th and 19th centuries in the Falkirk area .......... 28 TABLES Table 1 Content of data fields on the Microsoft Access data entry form ........................................ 9 Table 2 Dictionaries constraining field content on the Microsoft Access data entry form ........... 10 Table 3 Properties used to describe and distinguish sandstone building stones ........................... 14 Table 4 Properties used to describe and distinguish granite building stones ................................ 15 Table 5 Properties used to distinguish roofing slates ...................................................................