Moffat sits at the top of Annandale, and many folk just drive past on the M74, but if you have a stop here and have a look around the town, there is much to see. This EarthCache takes you to St Andrews' Church.
First some history.
There has been a parish church in Moffat for a long time, though the first recorded church was already built in 1177, when it is recorded as being transferred to the Bishop of Glasgow.
In 1790, a site was given by the Earl of Hopetoun for the building of a new church. This was duly built, with seats for 1,000 people. The church was topped off with a spire, which carried the Earl of Hopetoun's crest of a flying spur. As a result the church became known to townsfolk as the Flying Spur Kirk. The Flying Spur Kirk did not last for long, being replaced by a new parish church on a site immediately to its south.
St Andrew's Parish Church, Moffat, was opened on the 23 September 1887, just 97 years after the Kirk it replaced. It was designed by John Starforth, an Edinburgh-based architect, and built of red sandstone from a local quarry.
Sandstone (sometimes known as arenite) is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand sized minerals or rock grains Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any color, but the most common colors are: tan, brown, yellow, red, grey, pink, white, and black. Since sandstone beds often form highly visible cliffs and other features, certain colors of sandstone have been strongly identified with certain regions. The formation of sandstone involves two principal stages. First, a layer or layers of sand accumulates as the result of sedimentation,either from water (as in a stream, lake, or sea) or from air (as in a desert). Typically, sedimentation occurs by the sand settling out from suspension; i.e., ceasing to be rolled or bounced along the bottom of a body of water or ground surface (e.g., in a desert). Finally, once it has accumulated, the sand becomes sandstone when it is compacted by pressure of overlying deposits and cemented by the precipitation of minerals within the pore spaces between sand grains.
Sedimentary rocks are types of rock that are formed by the deposition and subsequent cementation of that material at the earth's surface and within bodies of water. Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause mineral and/or organic particles to settle in place. The particles that form a sedimentary rock by accumulating are called sediment. Before being deposited, the sediment was formed by weathering and erosion from the source area, and then transported to the place of deposition by water, wind, ice, mass movement or galciers. Sedimentation may also occur as minerals precipitate from water solution or shells of aquatic creatures settle out of suspension.
In an environment where there is slow movement of water, such as a lagoon, the flow of water means that small grains are able to settle. In an environment where there is fast movement of water such as a mountain stream, smaller grains are not able to settlel and only larger grains will settle.
Stratification is the way sediment layers are stacked over each other, and can occur on the scale of hundreds of meters, and down to submillimeter scale. It is a fundamental feature of sedimentary rocks.Over time the different sediment types will be stacked on top of each other.
Here you are at the entrance to the church and I would like you to look at the coloumns to the sides of the doorway.
This being an EarthCache, in order to log it, I ask that you complete the below tasks. Please send the answers to me, and do not include them in your log. You can send them to me by using the message facility or email, both of which can be found by looking at my profile.
1.Please describe the feel and look at the individual grain size on the coloumns, how big are the individual grains (please be specific, by this I mean size in mm)?
2. One of the coloumns has a darker coloured band, how wide is this, the grains are different here, are they bigger or smaller than the rest of the coloumn?
3. Why do you think that the grains are different here? Please tell me how fast the rate of sedimentation will have been, will have been slower or quicker than the rest of the coloumn?
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