Calcite on Fluorite

Ice-clear complex scalenohedral crystals of light sherry-tan Calcite form an intergrown cluster in the centre of a bed of Fluorite crystals from Ladywash mine. Ladywash is one of Derbyshire’s most famous mines and lies a little north of the beautiful village of Eyam. Covering a long mound of massive Fluorite are colourless cubic crystals of between 0.5 and 1.5 cm, themselves heavily overgrown with opaque, snow-white crystalline Fluorite or Calcite. The Calcite scalenohedral crystals measure to 3.5 cm long, are characteristically double terminated and display complex sets of faces, all with a glassy to waxy lustre. This is one of the more unusual specimens I have seen from Ladywash and a delightful example of well crystallised Calcite from this locality.