The West Midlands, including parts of Staffordshire, Worcestershire, and Warwickshire, has relatively few accessible fossil hunting locations. However, it is home to one of the most important fossil sites in the UK – the Wren’s Nest.
This former limestone quarry is renowned for its Silurian deposits, which yield a rich variety of fossils, particularly trilobites, brachiopods, and corals. The thick limestone beds exposed at the site have made it historically significant for fossil collecting.
Although quarrying ceased in the early 20th century, the Wren’s Nest remains a key location for Silurian fossils, with its exposures continuing to provide important material from this period.
Situated on the border of Warwickshire and Oxfordshire, this quarry is popular with schools. These are able to visit and collect fossils from a designated area, where the quarry regularly dumps fresh material on a spoil heap. Rich in echinoids and now an SSSI, this is a site definitely worth visiting, if permission can be obtained. Jurassic, Disused Quarry, Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦
The Wren’s Nest National Nature Reserve is an area of nature reserve to the northeast of Dudley in the West Midlands. It was designated as a National Nature Reserve in 1956 because of its exceptional geological and paleontological features of Silurian age. It is also a SSSI. Silurian, Disused Quarry, Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦
