Obelisk fountain: Between 1700 and 1850 machinery used to raise and store water for the higher parts of the city stood on the site. To commemorate this in 1860 a drinking fountain was erected by John Henry Gurney.
(More information on the fountain further down. BUT first the earth lesson.)
Granite is the signature rock of the continents. More than that, granite is the signature rock of the planet Earth itself. The other rocky planets—Mercury, Venus and Mars—are covered with basalt, as is the ocean floor on Earth. But only Earth has this beautiful and interesting rock type in abundance.
Granite Basics
Three things distinguish granite.
First, granite is made of large mineral grains (which is where its name came from) that fit tightly together.
Second, granite always consists of the minerals quartz and feldspar, with or without a wide variety of other minerals (accessory minerals). The quartz and feldspar generally give granite a light color, ranging from pinkish to white. That light background color is punctuated by the darker accessory minerals. Thus classic granite has a "salt-and-pepper" look. The most common accessory minerals are the once you can see as the black and shiny once.
Third, almost all granite is igneous (it solidified from a magma) and plutonic (it did so in a large, deeply buried body or pluton). The random arrangement of grains in granite—its lack of fabric—is evidence of its plutonic origin. Rock with the same composition as granite can form through long and intense metamorphism of sedimentary rocks. But that kind of rock has a strong fabric and is usually called granite gneiss.
Granite is a strong stone because its mineral grains have grown tightly together during a very slow cooling period. And the quartz and feldspar that compose it are harder than steel. This makes granite desirable for buildings and for ornamental purposes such as gravestones. Granite takes a good polish and resists weathering and acid rain. But stone dealers use "granite" to refer to any rock with big grains and hard minerals.
What Granite Means
Students of granites classify them in three or four categories. I-type (igneous) granites appear to arise from the melting of preexisting igneous rocks, S-type (sedimentary) granites from melted sedimentary rocks (or their metamorphic equivalents in both cases). M-type (mantle) granites are rarer and are thought to have evolved directly from deeper melts in the mantle. A-type (anorogenic) granites now appear to be a special variety of I-type granites. The evidence is intricate and subtle, and the experts have been arguing for a long time, but that is the gist of where things stand now.
The immediate cause of granite collecting and rising in huge stocks and batholiths is thought to be the stretching apart, or extension, of a continent during plate tectonics. This explains how such large volumes of granite can enter the upper crust without exploding, shoving or melting their way upward. And it explains why the activity at the edges of plutons appears to be generally gentle and why their cooling is so slow.
On the grandest scale, granite represents the way the continents maintain themselves. The minerals in granitic rocks break down into clay and sand and are carried to the sea. Plate tectonics returns these materials through seafloor spreading and subduction, sweeping them beneath the edges of the continents. There they are rendered back into feldspar and quartz, ready to rise again to form new granite when and where the conditions are right.
To log this cache.
To get to log this cache you will have to visit and answer the questions which are related to the coordinates given the earthcache.
When answers are collected, send them to CO for verification.
As I own about 50 earthcaches there are MANY mails/messages to answer back on, and I will not always be able to answer right-back, BUT I READ ALL SENT ANSWERS AND LOGS, so if anything is not correct or need an upgrade, you will indeed hear back from me.
Thanks for your understanding, and for picking one of my caches.
You can log immediately answers are sent CO. If there are any questions about your answers CO will contact you.
Logs without answers to CO or with pending questions from CO will be deleted without any further notice.
Please do not include pictures in your log that may answer the questions.
Questions
1. Answer the questions under by visiting the Coordinates.
A. How do Granite Form?
B. Why is granite a common stone used for monuments?
C. Can you see any xenolith’s in the stone. And what is a xenolith? (Answer can be found at GZ)
D. Look at the black and shiny spots in the granite. What are they, and what type of stone does it typically occur in? (Answer can be found at GZ)
E. What is the total high of the Obelisk Fountain? (Answer can be found at GZ)
2. Take a photo of yourself, the group or your GPS when logging the cache.
Without revealing any answers!
(It’s voluntary to post a photo in your online log)
Obelisk Fountain
John Gurney (1819-1890) was MP for King's Lynn. In the following year John Bell designed another memorial drinking fountain combined with obelisk at Stratford in memory of John Gurney's uncle Samuel Gurney. The commission for a fountain with clean drinking water was part of a wider Victorian concern prompted by concerns over Cholera which was rife during the nineteenth century. In 1849, for example, it claimed 5,308 lives in Liverpool and 1,834 in Hull. In 1854 an outbreak in Soho ended after removal of the handle of the Broad Street pump by a committee instigated to action by the physician and self-trained scientist John Snow (1813-1858). Snow had established the link between cholera and contaminated drinking water in 1854, in addition, Henry Whitehead, an Anglican minister, helped Snow track down and verify the source of the disease, which turned out to be an infected well in London. Their conclusions were widely distributed and firmly established for the first time a definite link between germs and disease. Clean water and good sewage treatment, despite their major engineering and financial cost, slowly became a priority throughout the major developed cities in the world from this time onward.
The waterworks on the River Wensum, by which the city was amply supplied by the pure beverage of nature, were the property of the Corporation. They were let on lease together with the New Mills, the lessees being bound to supply the inhabitants according to a table of charges fixed by the Corporation, a committee of whom were appoint yearly, to inspect the works and control of the lessees.
The New Mills and waterworks were rebuilt in 1710. Water was conveyed from there in the reign of Elisabeth 1 to the Guildhall and the cross in the Market Place, but the general supply of the inhabitants was not attempted until 1697. The works were greatly improved and extended between the years 1790 and 1800. The water was not taken immediately at the mill dam as that was apt to be turbid, but was bought in a trunk or canal from Fuller’s hole, above the dye houses nearby a quarter of a mile from the mills.
John henry Gurney, a banker, amateur ornithologist and Liberty Party politican erected this fountain. The only son of Joseph John Gurney of Earlham Hall, John Henry Gurney published a number of articles in the Zoologist on the birds of Norfolk.
