FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Ru Smith]

Who has seen specimens with sphalerite from the Carrock Mine? This one, from the Harding Vein, is the first I've come across.

[Peter]

Very nice! Thank you for showing. Rarely one sees anything from this mine. I visited a couple of times the last 15 years.
Best regards
Peter

[Ru Smith]

Thanks Peter,

That is more recently than I have been there. What did you find?

I remember blades of wolframite (terminated crystals could be worked clear of the quartz with care), honey-coloured scheelite crystals and green apatite prisms.

[Ru Smith]

Chris Stanley kindly gave me this information: "Regarding sphalerite from Carrock. It is mentioned in a number of references (see Appendix 1 of Cooper & Stanley) but I always felt it was fairly unusual and would most likely be from close to the junction of the Harding vein and the East-West lead-zinc vein."

[nurbo]

Thanks for posting this Ru, yours is only the second Sphalerite from Carrock Ive ever seen, I bought one last year that is from the Smith Vein.

In a weird synchronicity I added my Carrock Sphalerite to the Mindat database and my collection thread on here on 22nd may 2012, exactly 1 year ago, to the day.

[Ru Smith]

Excellent, nurbo.

I saw the qualifier added on Mindat as follows: "Note: The mineral species Sphalerite is not listed in our database for this locality. This specimen may be misidentified or the mindat list of minerals at this locality may be incomplete."

These are clearly very rare, but not unheard of at the Carrock Mine.

[ian jones]

I collected at Carrock quite often, my collecting partner at the time worked there. Don't recall collecting sphalerite there, certainly nothing of any note. Nice to see these.

[Ru Smith]

Here's a map of the Lake District mines from Stanley & Vaughan 1982. Carrock Fell is up there in the North adjacent to the Carrock Fell Igneous Complex, in the aureole of the Skiddaw Granite. Mineralization here is thought to be of Early Devonian age.

[Ru Smith]

Stanley & Vaughan write this (attached) about the Early Devonian sphalerites. They are very different from the sphalerites in the younger (Early Carboniferous) lead-zinc veins, which are typically lighter in colour and have curved faces. These very dark Carrock examples have flat (though with some steps) tetrahedron faces and, in the Harding Vein example, rough octahedral corners composed of minute terminations.

[colin robinson]

I had a piece with a label from the Bill Davidson collection. With his partner Norman Thompson, Bill was one of the great field collectors in Cumbria. I believe the label said it was collected in 1958 but I no longer have the piece as it was of doubtful aesthetics and really only helpful as a location piece.

There are several references to sphalerite from Carrock in Brian Young's Glossary of the minerals of the Lake District.