Fluorite

This is a Height’s mine Fluorite specimen of exceptional quality because of the colour, clarity and size of crystals and the manor in which they are aesthetically scattered over the light grey, Quartz covered matrix.  Heights mine is to the north of the village of Westgate in the Weardale Valley and is world-famous for its stunning emerald-green Fluorite.  The Fluorite forms interpenetrant twinned crystals of between 0.8 and 1.8 cm on edge, all of remarkable gemmy clarity and of a somewhat unusual minty-chrome green.  Their edges are sharp although some have slightly bevelled edges, quite like those from Middlehope Shield mine.  There is no mix-up of locality however as the matrix is markedly different from each location.  This matrix is an iron-rich altered limestone, over which micro-crystals of colourless glassy Quartz have grown.  Against the matrix these appear light grey and so provide an ideal foil to the minty-green Fluorite.  A magnificent museum quality specimen.