Strathclyde

Loanhead Quarry is situated in the Clyde Plateau Lavas of Dinantian (Lower Carboniferous), Calciferous Sandstone age. Within the quarry numerous individual flows are clearly distinguishable over a total thickness of about 66m. The flows are porphyritic basalts many being both highly vesicular and amygdaloidal especially towards the upper portions and show a wide range of secondary minerals. A tholeiitic dyke of Tertiary age, approximately 30m wide trends NW-SE across the quarry. This dyke may have been responsible for the creation of a second distinctive suite of secondary minerals in the adjacent lavas. Thermal contact effects however are not discernible.
The geology and mineralogy of Loanhead Quarry is comprehensively covered in a paper in the Russell Society Journal by my old late friend Kemp Meikle. (“The Secondary Mineralogy of the Clyde Plateau Lavas, Scotland”, Part 2, Loanhead Quarry, Journal of the Russell Society, 2(2), 15-21, (1989), by Kemp Meikle)
 
The result is a long list of interesting and some rare minerals from this quarry.
I first visited Loanhead in the early 1980s and as I knew the manager very well, I would call in at times he suggested after they had had a big blast. This resulted in me obtaining a lot of top-quality mineral specimens from here.
At some point in the late 1990s the ownership changed and now the new owners do not allow mineral collectors access any more.......everything goes into the crusher! This is such a pity as I’m sure there might be new discoveries to be made…this situation is now being mapped over the whole of Scotland I’m afraid!

Boyleston Quarry worked basaltic lavas belonging to the Clyde Plateau Lavas of Calciferous Sandstone (Dinantian) age which also form the high ground extending south and west towards Dunlop and Beith. The lavas are fine grained and sometimes porphyritic, while the upper portion of each flow is generally vesicular and/or amygdaloidal. There is a great deal of mineralisation in this rock.
The quarry itself may date back as far as 1862 and was worked intermittently until it finally closed in about 1972. The list of minerals found here is summarised in Kemp Meikles paper: “The Secondary Mineralogy of the Clyde Plateau Lavas, Scotland.
Part 1: Boyleston Quarry”, Journal Russell Society., 2(2), 11 – 14 (1989).
I first went to Boyleston Quarry with my old late pal Kemp Meikle in the early 1980s but compared to what it had been when working there was little to find there. Most of my material from Boyleston came originally from Kemp including most of the specimens below.

This Antimony mine was first opened as a trial in the late 1840s and worked a Quartz mineral vein that was recorded as being between 12 – 20 inches wide and ran north-south. The ore was Stibnite (Antimony Sulphide, Sb2S3). None of the ore appears to have been taken away presumably due to transport difficulties from such a remote place. The old workings consist merely of a level driven 30 to 50 feet into the face of the hill, this has no collapsed completely and there is no access underground.
At the time when the mine was opened masses and strings of the Stibnite were found up to 8 inches in thickness.  All the common oxidation products of Stibnite are present, ie. Cervantite, Valentinite and Kermesite.  Cervantite is by far the commonest and often exists as pseudomorphs after stibnite.  In the past there have been some doubtful records of Cinnabar (HgS) from this locality, but this is probably not correct but mistaken for Kermesite.

I first visited the Knipes trial Mine with my father in1969 on the same day as we also visited Bail Hill further to the south.
Many years ago, my grandfather who was a mining engineer gave my father and I a large "brick-sized" piece of Quartz that had Stibnite crystals in in it. It looked exactly like the material that we had found at the old Knipes Mine. At the time we all were a little puzzled about just where this specimen had come from but only later, we realised it was not from my grandfather but was from my great-grandfather! He too had been a miner in the Bathgate area of West Lothian and there was a rumour that he had worked in Ayrshire for a time…..we came to the conclusion that either he had been involved with the original mine workings at Fountainhead or he knew somebody that had….we will never know!
I have visited the old mine a few times over the last 40-50 years and I accumulated a number of specimens, including some of the rarer secondary minerals from there, with the help of several of my collecting friends.