Raisby Hill Quarry is a Site of Special Scientific Interest

Site of Special Scientific Interest

A Site of Special Scientific Interest is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom. SSSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in Great Britain are based upon...

 in east County Durham

County Durham

County Durham is a ceremonial county and unitary district in north east England. The county town is Durham. The largest settlement in the ceremonial county is the town of Darlington...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. It lies just under 2 km east of the village of Coxhoe

Coxhoe

Coxhoe is a village in County Durham, England. It is situated between Bowburn and Cornforth, a few miles south of Durham.Coxhoe is also a civil parish which also includes nearby Quarrington Hill....

.

The site is a working quarry and has been designated as of national importance in the Geological Conservation Review

Geological Conservation Review

The Geological Conservation Review is produced by the UK's Joint Nature Conservation Committee and is designed to identify those sites of national and international importance needed to show all the key scientific elements of the geological and geomorphological features of Britain...

. Until 1984, the site included most of the area that now forms the Raisby Hill Grassland

Raisby Hill Grassland

Raisby Hill Grassland is a Site of Special Scientific Interest in east County Durham, England. It lies just over 1 km east of the village of Coxhoe....

 SSSI.

The quarry exposes a section through the Marl Slate

Slate

Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. The result is a foliated rock in which the foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering...

 and the Ford and Raisby Formations of the Upper Permian

Permian

The PermianThe term "Permian" was introduced into geology in 1841 by Sir Sir R. I. Murchison, president of the Geological Society of London, who identified typical strata in extensive Russian explorations undertaken with Edouard de Verneuil; Murchison asserted in 1841 that he named his "Permian...

. It is the type locality for the Raisby Formation, a carbonate

Carbonate

In chemistry, a carbonate is a salt of carbonic acid, characterized by the presence of the carbonate ion, . The name may also mean an ester of carbonic acid, an organic compound containing the carbonate group C2....

 unit of the English Zechstein

Zechstein

The Zechstein is a unit of sedimentary rock layers of Middle to Late Permian age located in the European Permian Basin which stretches from the east coast of England to northern Poland...

 sequence. The exposed sequence commences with the Yellow Sands, which are overlain by the Marl Slate and some 200 feet of calcareous

Calcareous

Calcareous is an adjective meaning mostly or partly composed of calcium carbonate, in other words, containing lime or being chalky. The term is used in a wide variety of scientific disciplines.-In zoology:...

 and dolomitic limestones.