Fluorite

West Pasture mine is situated about 2 km north of the small town of Stanhope in the Weardale Valley and is rightly famous for its characteristic apple-green Fluorites, specimens of which grace museums and private collections all around the world. This charming specimen has a hidden rusty-orange ironstone matrix completely covered with intergrown transparent crystals of cubic Fluorite, all averaging around 1 to 1.5 cm with occasional crystals to 2 cm. The overall colour is various shades of delicate, slightly sour apple-green, although on close examination of individual crystals they nearly all have a more colourless outer skin with a pale apple-green core, and contain a single cubic phantom outlined in pencil-thin lime green. A beautiful large miniature from West Pasture mine in Weardale.