Doulting Stone – Somerset  (Lead authors: JT& WGT)

Doulting Stone (c.2m thick) is an informal unit within Middle Jurassic Inferior Oolite Group, restricted to a small area near Shepton Mallet in Somerset.  This orange-buff cross-bedded crinoidal limestone is richly fossiliferous: brachiopods, bivalves, ammonites, echinoids & crinoids (it is rarely oolitic).  The age is Upper Bajocian, contemporary with the Burton Limestone of the Dorset Inferior Oolite (qv).

At present, Doulting Stone is extracted from only three quarries near the village of Doulting, with a bed thickness of c.2m.   Older quarries have been worked at Brambleditch and Chelynch since Roman times.  The stone quarried in early medieval times was rather finer-grained.  Stone quarried later tends to be coarser grained with conspicuous abundant crinoid ossicles.  Cemented with calcite, it has a crystalline and coarsely granular appearance.  In sunshine it sparkles!

The Inferior Oolite in The Mendips area rests unconformably on Carboniferous Limestone, clasts of which occur in the matrix of the stone.  The stone weathers to creamy-brown or grey, with a regular and uniform texture.

Doulting Stone is known to have been used in one parish in Dorset, Sandford Orcas, three miles north of Sherborne. The Manor House (ST62280 21029) was built in 1550 with Doulting, Ham Hill Stone and White Lias from Camel Hill.  The second manor house, Jerrards (ST62062 20489, not open to the public), is mostly Inferior Oolite and Ham Hill Stone, but the front arch of the porch (built 1616) is Doulting Stone.  Wells Cathedral and Glastonbury Abbey are fine examples outside Dorset.
Text and photographs by JT & WGT April 2017