I have been digging in the garden in Rossendale, Lancashire, to clear an area to pave and put up a green house. The area has previously been a barn, demolished in the 1990s, and since then field, then mowed as lawn.
After clearing the turf I started to level the earth and stones below. I found that the old barn floor was about 8" (20cm) down, composed of ruble stones. In amongst them I suddenly found this which I immediately saw a resemblence to tree fern stems/trunks that I had seen in museum. It is very dense, weighing in at just over a Kilogram, denser than the surrounding stones in the old floor.
There is an old coal mine less than a mile away and one of the nineteenth century inhabitants is shown on the census, 1861 I think, as a farmer and miner. There is also evidence of several small unrecorded mine close to the garden than that. We have a borehole for water and the record of that shows 40 feet of shale and clay before solid rock is found.
I note that besides the patterend surface there are several holes that look like burrows penetrating the object, especially visible at the ends.
My assumption is that the burrows predate the end breakages as they would have weakened it at those points.
My photos are too large to send all at once.
Any ideas?
Thank you