Phil - Warden, ULMC Caseg Fraith Hut🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

ALT The exterior of MacDonalds on the corner of Warren Street containing white-cream Travertine and black Rustenburg Gabbro. The layers within the travertine are aligned vertically as facing on the pilasters surrounding the windows. This stone takes a good polish in addition to being highly decorative. The greyish layers identify this as St John’s Travertine, coming from Terme di San Giovanni near Siena. The Rustenberg Gabbro, from South Africa, forms the skirting to this at street level.

ALT The Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Mortimer Market. Mortimer Market Centre is clad with ornamental green slates from the Lake District. These show a textbook set of sedimentary structures, formed during the deposition of these volcanic ashes in a crater lake. These include ripples, slumps and syn-sedimentary faults. Can anyone explain the strange text below the no smoking warning symbol?

ALT Heal's Shopfront. There is a decorative floor with a chequer-board pattern with squares of green Connemara Marble, surrounded by borders of an unidentified white marble with small squares of black Carboniferous Limestone, probably Belgian Black Marble. The columns supporting the façade are of Carboniferous Hopton Wood Stone from Wirksworth, Derbyshire, a limestone is packed with fossilised shell fragments and crinoid ossicles. The joint entrance to Habitat and Heal’s, which houses bakers Peyton & Byrne, is faced with Tivoli Travertine.

ALT The porches to the service doors. in Windmill Street, of the NatWest Bank in Metropolis House clad with slabs of a beautiful metamorphic rock, 400 Million year old Otta Schist from Norway. Slabs are laid parallel to the schistosity defined by fine, silky micas. Prominent matchstick-like phenocrysts of actinolite are present, sometimes showing variolitic ‘bow-tie’ textures.