Denmark - chalk ECOS, Frome, Somerset
European Community Of Stone

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Close-up of the chalk and its amazing fossils.
It is a very fine-grained limestone.

About the rock: The creamy white stone is Cretaceous limestone or chalk. The striking feature of this rock is the the richness of fossils, some in section within the rock, but many standing out from the weathered surface like spaghetti. These bushy colonies of bryozoa created reef banks on the Cretaceous sea floor.
The geology of Denmark is almost entirely of varieties of Chalk with overlying Tertiaries and Pleistocene, but the Chalk in this monolith is unlike almost all of our familiar chalks. It is both harder, and more clearly fossiliferous. It represents a fraction of the time unit called the Danian, a stage of the Cretaceous system only poorly represented in Britain. 		Place or origin: This monolith came from Faxe, a very large and ancient quarry on the east coast of the island of Sjaeland, south of Copenhagen. A source of a pure calcium carbonate, it has several industrial uses other than cement making. It is a pure chemical lime, as well as an aquifer for the water supplies of the island and the capital city.
Looking out over the narrow strait which is the main access to the Baltic Sea, Faxe Quarry has many associations. Its large floor area was served by a network of rail spurs worked by a famous collection of small steam engines, a place of pilgrimage for railway enthusiasts. The other fame has to be the nearby Brewery. Faxe Beer has qualities which geologists attribute to the nature of the local groundwater (naturally chalky and hard), which is an excuse for testing a bottle or two. The brewery, as is the norm in Scandinavia it seems, has always been a sponsor of archaeology and exploration.