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Introduction to Houghton Quarry

Fossils and Fossil Collecting in Houghton Quarry
Bedfordshire Geological Guide and Geology Info

Houghton Quarry is an abandoned Quarry formerly used to extract chalk for a cement works on site (no longer there) Quarrying stopped about 40 years ago but due to its size, and terracing, only parts are overgrown, leaving an enormous amount of clean chalk, a good amount as boulders of various sizes on the quarry floor, yielding many good fossils which are very easy to collect.

Houghton - Bedfordshire
Last updated: [06/06/06]  last visited 2007
Cretaceous
Written by Colin Huller

(Houghton Quarry - 2007)


Location Information

Inspite of this quarry being closed for over 40 years, there is plenty to find with good-clean chalk faces still within this quarry.

(Not Suitable for Children)

Although fossils can be collected by examining boulders on the quarry floor and paths, we cannot recommend any large quarries for children due to the safety of the site.

Easy, A 230 m walk along the Icknield Way footpath from the Chalk Hill pub car park (uphill) or a 165 m walk (flat) from on road parking in Millers Way.

Disused Quarry

Quarry, fossils can be found on the quarry floor and in the cliff sections
ACCESS
RIGHTS
Please obtain permission from the landowner before entering this quarry.

Please follow our national fossil collecting code

A UK Fossils & Discovering Fossils initiative (c) 2006

! IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTES !

We recommend that hard hats are worn at all times at this location. Extreme care should be taken, especially along the path which is overgrown and slippery and at one point, the path narrows due to erosion and there is a 3m drop where there is no fence!


Other Similar Locations to Houghton Quarry

There are so many chalk locations, some of the best are in Sussex and Kent. The most popular being Seven Sisters, Peacehaven, Beachy Head and Eastbourne. There are also good chalk locations in Norfolk, mostly foreshore exposures at Overstrand, West Runton and Weybourne. You can also find some chalk locations in Dorset, White Nothe, Pinhay Bay and Beer Head, which is also a very good location for chalk fossils.

North of England, Chalk locations such as Danes Dyke are very popular with the famous white cliffs of Bempton.

At Whitecliff Bay and Culver Cliff on the Isle of Wight, Culver Cliff (west of the bay) has tall cliffs of Upper Chalk


Stone Tumblers (Lapidary)


Stone Tumblers are used for tumbling and polishing rough rock, stones and pebbles including those found on the beach and glass.

Whilst collecting fossils, on those days where you come back empty handed, you could collect rocks, stones and glass from the beach and tumble then at home.

These are all high quality machines to give a professional finish to your samples. The tumblers can be used with a variety of grits, most commonly Silicon Carbide Grit and Cerium Oxide. We have a wide range of rough rocks for sale too.

Microfossils are much easier to collect because they are so small that the vast majority of collections only concentrate on large finds. These small finds can simply be found by taking small samples of sands, crags, clays and soft rocks and examining them under a microscope.

We have a wide range of microscopes for sale, both for the study of fossils, but also educational and professional for use in the laboratory. We have Stereo microscopes, Compound Microscopes, Polarising Microscopes and Monocular Microscopes.


We have thousands of Test Sieves for Particle Analysis.

Endecotts Sieves: For accurate dependable results you can't buy a better test sieve than Endecotts. At every stage of manufacture each test sieve is individually inspected.

High Precision Tecan manufactures precision apertures as small as 3 microns for a wide array of applications such as filtering, sieving and nozzles. Its high-performance, ASTM/ISO compliant test sieves satisfy the most demanding fine particle grading requirements.



Images, Graphics & Content - (C)opyright 2007 - Colin Huller
UK Fossils Management - Alister Cruickshanks & Roy Bullard
UK Fossils Curator - Ian Cruickshanks
UK Fossils is a division of CWA Design and run in conjunction with UKGE. Whilst we try to ensure that all content is accurate and up to date we cannot guarantee this. UK Fossils takes no responsibility in the accuracy of this content, nor takes any liabilities for any trips, events or exchanges between visitors using either the discussion board or the UK Fossils planner. Any posted trips and events by UK Fossils are personal and not arranged by UK Fossils, therefore visitors should seek their own personal insurance cover. Please remember to always check the tide times.
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