Tag: gneiss

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Gneiss things

Those of you that have been reading for some time may remember that the croft is built on an outcrop of Lewisian gneiss. This is an extremely hard rock, Precambrian metamorphic, and at 3,000 million years old is one of the oldest rocks on the planet.

The gneiss outcrop by the house

Which makes it all the more interesting that anyone would try to carve it. Even denting it seems impossible. I can only imagine the huge amount of work that went into smoothing and scooping out a grinding bowl from a rock this hard.

There is a small maker over on the Isle of Lewis who does just that. A couple who cut and carve this amazing rock into bowls, earrings and key fobs. The same outcrop of gneiss as the house is built on, but in the outer isles. http://www.gneiss-things.com

I’ve always had a thing for pestle and mortars. I love them. Such an ancient implement, used since the earliest days to grind and crush grain or spices. I’ve got a few already, but when I saw that there was one made out of lewisian gneiss, I was intrigued.

Pestle and mortar

I’ve hankered after one of these for years, and I figured that it would make a fitting moving-in present to the house. A sort of homage to the bedrock that we’re built on as well as something lovely to own and use.

It arrived a few days ago in the post. It’s immensely heavy (useful when you’re grinding spices) and incredibly tactile.

It joins my French deep-bowl ceramic pestle and mortar from the pottery in SW France where I once lived, and the grey stone one gifted to me by my best friend many years ago. Almost a collection.

Hoping for many years of happy spice grindage in our new home!

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The stone

Ever since we first walked the croft two years ago and and fell in love with it, we’ve been intrigued with the small, bare outcrop of stone that we have on the southern slope.

We’ve always wondered what it is. We are built mainly on shale, which appears all over the croft. But this isn’t like shale, which is a layered, crumbly rock.

It’s a very hard, smooth rock and with a slightly crystaline structure.

Local geology maps show that we are sited on an outcrop of Lewissian Gneiss, one of the world’s oldest rocks. But it doesn’t quite look like the stripy gneiss that I’ve seen elsewhere in images.

A helpful islander (thank you Julian!) who is also a geologist offered to come and have a closer look for us when he was in the area and confirm what it was. He explained it could be granite, or gneiss – it was difficult to identify from a picture.

He popped over a few days ago and we had a socially distanced chat. He’s confirmed that it’s definitely gneiss. I would have been happy with any diagnosis, but I really happy that it’s what we thought it was.

There’s something comforting in knowing that your land contains some of the oldest rock in the world.

As old as the beginnings. As old as the legends.

That’s just so cool somehow. 😎