The Horsham Stone quarry at Broadbridge Heath is the last in a long line of local stone quarries dating back to Roman times.

As an indication of its widespread use in former times, in addition to our own St Mary's some 350 other churches in the south east of England have Horsham stone roofs. Much of the Causeway is paved with it (on the west side).

Following his interesting talk to the Horsham Society at our AGM, Roger Birch, Head of Geology at Collyers, continues to conduct tours of the quarry explaining enthusiastically the periodical discovery of fossils in the extracted stone. These fossils include not only trace fossils (such as sand ripples, animal tail brush marks and mollusc burrowings) but also sizeable foot-prints of long extinct species of dinosaurs. All these are estimated to be some 125 million years old!

Peter Tobutt