Localities
The world's classic mineral localities, from Cornwall and Weardale to Tsumeb, Ojuela and Broken Hill: what each one produced, and what to look for in it.
Britain's classic mineral localities sit in a handful of orefields worked from the 1700s: Cornwall and Devon for copper and tin, the Caldbeck Fells for lead secondaries, Weardale for fluorite, Derbyshire for Blue John, the Mendips for the lead-manganese suite, and Leadhills and Wanlockhead in Scotland, which named 4 species.
Cornwall
Two centuries of copper and tin mining left Cornwall with a mineral suite few regions anywhere can match, and a set of m…
Read →
Devon
Devon shares Cornwall's geology and much of its mineralogy, with tungsten and scorodite at Hemerdon and a copper-ar…
Read →
The Caldbeck Fells
A small area of northern Lakeland that produced some of the most distinctive lead secondaries in Britain: campylite from…
Read →
Weardale and the North Pennines
The North Pennine orefield produced British fluorite at a quality that competes internationally, and one mine at Rogerle…
Read →
Derbyshire
The Peak District orefield gave Britain its only ornamental fluorite in Blue John, centuries of lead mining behind it, a…
Read →
The Mendip Hills
A short range of Somerset limestone that gave its name to the mineral mendipite and produced a lead-manganese assemblage…
Read →
Leadhills and Wanlockhead
Two villages either side of the Lanarkshire and Dumfriesshire border which between them are the type locality for leadhi…
Read →
Tsumeb
The most species-diverse mine ever worked. Tsumeb produced well over 200 species and set the world standard for azurite,…
Read →
Ojuela
Mexico's classic oxidised deposit, known worldwide for hemimorphite, adamite and a run of arsenate species on limon…
Read →
Broken Hill
Australia's most important mineral locality: a vast silver-lead-zinc orebody that produced world-class rhodonite, p…
Read →
Bou Azzer
A cobalt district in the Moroccan Anti-Atlas, and the locality that every erythrite specimen in the world is judged agai…
Read →
Mibladen
A lead field in the Upper Moulouya of Morocco, and the locality that defines what vanadinite is supposed to look like: r…
Read →
Milpillas Mine
A working copper mine in Sonora. Milpillas azurite is the modern benchmark for the species, and the shallow oxidised zon…
Read →
Dalnegorsk
Primorsky Krai, in the Russian Far East: skarn ore bodies producing datolite, ilvaite, calcite, fluorite and galena at a…
Read →Red Cloud Mine
The Silver District claim that set the standard for wulfenite: thick orange-red tablets, the Ed Over legend, and a local…
Read →Alston Moor
The barium capital of the North Pennines: witherite, barytocalcite and alstonite, alongside the fluorite, galena and sph…
Read →