Time for another stone in limelight (From Dorset Echo)

Time for another stone in limelight

10:00am Friday 10th February 2012 in Your Letters

David Nash asks why the sculpture by the Littlemoor roundabout is not made of Portland Stone (Have Your Say, February 1).

I do not claim to understand the artwork. Even the artist seemed unsure if his rocks on stalks represents geology, fish or birds – storks on their backs, juggling perhaps?

However, I know the rocks’ source.

They came from the neighbouring Relief Road cutting through Southdown Ridge, which like the Nothe to Wyke Regis ridge, and the Sandsfoot, Bowleaze and Osmington cliffs, are formed from the major “Corallian Group” of clay, sandstone and limestone beds.

The corallian sandstone is a different formation to that at West Bay and Burton Bradstock.

All these, and Portland Stone, are simply different rocks all originating as sea-floor sediments in the jurassic, when the world’s lands and seas were different to now thanks to continental drift and sea-level changes, and what became Britain lay in tropical latitudes.

Drift processes also raised our hills, including the “Weymouth Anticline”, an arched-upwards fold whose eroded remnants include Portland and the ridges across the Weymouth peninsula.

This also explains why some are misled by the publicity name “Jurassic Coast”.

The rocks are jurassic – apart from the chalk, of Cretaceous age. The coast is not jurassic, but very recent, geologically.

David Nash is wide of the mark. I do not understand the sculpture but we should be grateful for it given our beloved council’s usual insensitivity towards natural scenery, open vistas and benefices to the town.

However, it highlights a major local rock next to its source, albeit without its complete geological context.

Portland Stone is rightly celebrated locally.

This artwork gives our other rocks their ‘say’.

As for the pineapples and twinning-signs, no official yet has had the courage and courtesy to explain why they had to be replaced by an exclusive sailing organisation’s billboard.

Nigel Graham, Kestrel View, Weymouth