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Greenhill Farm

Greenhill Farm Quarry is a disused aggregate and cement quarry, which was quarried from at least 1875 and probably finished in the mid 1940s. The quarry exposes Middle Jurassic limestones that are about 165 million years old. The rocks here are so important because they provide lots of clues to tell us what Oxfordshire would have been like 165 million years ago, when these limestones formed. England was much further south than it is today, and Oxfordshire would have been at the same latitude as present-day North Africa. The limestones formed in a tropical sea that covered the area. The rocks here contain lots of fossils of the creatures that lived in this Jurassic sea, including shellfish and sea urchins. OGT cleared some of the rock faces in Greenhill Farm in February 2005 as part of an Aggregate Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF) project. The clearance has allowed us to see the rocks that were covered with vegetation and scree. We were then able to record and log the rock sequence to give us a permanent record of the geology. The photos show what a big difference we made in one day!

Greenhill Farm Quarry before clearance.

OGT's volunteers working hard to clear the quarry face.

There is no public access to Greenhill Farm Quarry.
Permission must be sought from the landowner.