North Quarry Nature Reserve - Holwell, Leicestershire - Flora and Fauna Information Signs on Waymarking.com

"North Quarry, covering 2 hectares, is a Regionally Important Geological Site and has considerable wildlife and historical interest.

The Stanton Ironworks Company worked the area for ironstone from 1943 to 1963. The road way was
laid to allow lorries to carry the ore from the quarry down to the railway.

Once working ceased, most of the quarry was filled in and returned to agriculture. The only remaining exposed face now forms the reserve.

The rocks exposedin the Holwell quarries were laid down beneath a sea, which covered much of present-day northwest Europe in the early jurassic period, about 190 million years ago.

The lowest and oldest visible section of rock is the top of the Marlstone Rock Formation, which consists largely of brown oxidised oolitic ironstone. This was slowly deposited in a shallow sea under high-energy conditions affected by waves. Fossils include crinoids (sea lilies), belemnites, bivalves and brachiopods.

Above the Marlstone Rock Formation are a series of mudstones (clays, shales) and limestones, known as the Whitby Mudstone Formation. These rocks were deposited slowly in possibly deeper, marine waters below wave base. (The sequence includes a ‘paper shale’, which represents a major, global, anoxic oceanic event.) The animals living in such an environment were generally free-swimming ammonites and fish, and, where suitable bottom conditions existed, gastropods (snail), bivalves and echinoids (sea urchins).

The Jurassic rocks are overlain by boulder clay left by the retreating Ice Age glaciers, which contains erratic fragments of the Lincolnshire Limestone Formation. Soil derived from this clay supports calcareous grassland species, such as Cowslip and Common-spotted Orchid in spring, Salad Burnet, “Common Bird’s-foot-trefoil, Common Vetch and Perforate St John’s-wort in summer. The old road is sparsely vegetated with mosses, lichens and occasional herbs such as Biting Stonecrop.

The wildflowers attract many butterflies including Painted Lady, Dingy Skipper, Meadow Brown, Ringlet and Small Copper.

Please take the opportunity to visit the Other two fascinatinginature reserves at Holwell - Brown’s Hill Quarry and Holwell Mineral Line."

SOURCE - information board

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