Beautiful Bluestone

Lockdown loop #5

Simple observations…our loop today went past the large bluestone wall of Otago Boys High School. An article in Papers Past by William Blair in 1875 discussed building materials of Otago. At the time, the best bluestone quarries in the Province were thought to be in the Town Belt, the Leith Valley and Ross Creek. The stone was considered too hard for chiselled work, but excellent for rubble and ’the basement of nine-tenths of the buildings of Dunedin are built of bluestone rubble’. I often associate bluestone with our historic city, if only walls could really talk...

Reference: The Building Stones of Otago. ODT, ISSUE 4187, 20 JULY 1875, PAGE 3