The ploughed fields around Kingstone and Moolham can reveal ammonites weathered from Lower Jurassic limestone. Dactylioceras, Harpoceras and Hildoceras are recorded in the local collecting account, but visibility depends on cultivation and crop cover, and landowner permission is needed before collecting from these working fields.
FIND FREQUENCY: ♦♦♦♦♦ – Ammonites can be conspicuous after cultivation and weathering, but availability varies and complete specimens are not guaranteed.
CHILDREN: ♦♦♦♦♦ – An accompanied countryside walk can suit families, with care around uneven ground, livestock, machinery, gates and roads.
ACCESS: ♦♦♦♦♦ – Two public-path approaches are described below. Walking rights do not permit leaving the route or collecting without the landowner’s agreement.
TYPE – Agricultural fields with loose fossils in disturbed ploughsoil and limestone brash; visit only within current access and collecting conditions.
DIRECTIONS
♦ Location 1 is opposite the church of St John the Evangelist and All Saints in Kingstone, on the public-path route towards Dowlish Wake. The original locality reference is 50.914493, -2.8842223; the guide’s village postcode is TA19 0NS.
♦ Follow the signed public path opposite the church. Do not treat the church driveway or nearby private access as an authorised car park; seek permission where necessary and keep gateways, drives and agricultural access clear.
♦ Location 2 begins from Long Close in south Ilminster, rather than Kingstone village. The original guide gives TA19 0EP for this approach. A public-path route leaves between houses on the south side, crosses or skirts several fields and continues towards Moolham Lane.
♦ The original reference for the second field area is 50.918342, -2.9084855. It is a locality reference, not a verified parking position. Keep to the signed route and check Somerset Council’s current rights-of-way information before setting out.
♦ The Ilminster Forum walk leaflet provides useful orientation for both routes. Follow current signs and any diversions rather than assuming that every feature in the older leaflet is unchanged. Arrange permission before removing fossils or entering adjoining field areas.
FOSSIL HUNTING
Where permission has been granted, look over the ground without disturbing crops or cultivation. Ploughing brings limestone fragments and fossils towards the surface, while subsequent weathering can make their outlines easier to see. Freshly turned, dry or muddy ground is not always the most revealing: shell ribs, whorls and pale limestone fragments may become clearer after loose soil has weathered away. Stay within the area and conditions agreed with the landowner.
The recorded field finds are mainly ammonites. Dactylioceras commonly shows strong ribs crossing its rounded whorls; Harpoceras is more compressed, with curved ribs and a keel; Hildoceras often has a conspicuous groove around the side of the whorl. These are useful recognition clues rather than a substitute for examining the complete specimen. Weathering, crushing and an obscured inner whorl can make species-level identification unreliable.
Look carefully at small fragments as well as obvious complete coils. A broken edge may reveal an ammonite partly enclosed in limestone, and a specimen with one attractive face may still have matrix attached on the other. Modern cultivation can fracture larger examples. Do not pull at an exposed whorl or try to prise a shell out of hard matrix in the field; support the whole piece and assess it later if removal is permitted.
The original collecting route particularly noted fossiliferous ground near the Moolham Lane end. This remains a locality observation, not a promise that the field is freshly ploughed, open for collecting or productive on any given visit. The church-side route is a separate locality, and neither should be replaced by an unspecified ammonite field elsewhere around Ilminster.
The preserved specimen photographs include more detailed names, but their labels do not establish a numbered source bed for every fossil. Loose material in ploughsoil has been displaced and mixed. Record the permitted field or path section, the date and any attached matrix; keep specimens from the two routes separate. A photograph of the find in place is useful even when the fossil must be left.
Historical Kingstone and Moolham quarries also yielded brachiopods, bivalves, belemnites and other fossils. Those quarry assemblages are described separately below and should not be treated as a confirmed checklist for each present field. In particular, the famous fish and reptiles of Strawberry Bank belong to a different locality. Collect modestly within permission, avoid excavation and leave unusual or fragile material unprepared until it has been assessed.
Image 1: Harpoceras falciferum
Image 2: Harpoceras serpentinum
Image 3: Hildoceras bifrons
Image 4: Hildoceras lusitanicum
Image 5: Haugia variabilis
Image 6: Dactylioceras commune
Image 7: Dactylioceras ammonite specimen from Kingstone, Somerset.
Image 8: Hildoceras bifrons ammonite specimen from Kingstone, Somerset.
Image 9: Harpoceras falciferum ammonite specimen from Kingstone, Somerset.
Image 10: Typical ammonite specimens from Kingstone, Somerset.
Image 11: Kingstone, Somerset, yields many Jurassic ammonites.
Geological research and fossil history of Kingstone and the nearby historical Moolham quarries
1865–1866 – Kingstone and Moolham quarries compared
Charles Moore published the measured Moolham succession and its differences from the Kingstone village quarry. His account documented erosion and the changing presence of thin fossil-bearing horizons; it did not measure the present field paths.
5 June 1911 – Moolham Quarry excursion
The Geologists’ Association visited the working quarry and recorded ammonites in disturbed Upper Lias material above the Marlstone, including Hildoceras, Harpoceras and Dactylioceras.
1928 – Moolham ammonite type described
S. S. Buckman named the specimen now catalogued as BGS GSM 49349 Phaularpites exiguus. The record gives Moolham provenance, without linking it to either present field.
1958 – Local ridge and old quarry documented
The Geological Survey described the Marlstone ridge extending to Kingstone and separate faunas in the surviving Moolham Farm quarry exposures, already largely obscured by buildings.
2013 – Historical type reinterpreted
Howarth illustrated GSM 49349 as a microconch of Harpoceras falciferum, retaining its connection to Buckman’s earlier type name and Moolham locality.
GEOLOGY
The relevant bedrock is the Beacon Limestone Formation of the Lias Group, historically called the Junction Bed. Across this part of Somerset it includes the lower, ferruginous Marlstone Rock Member and the younger, ammonite-rich Barrington Member. The formation spans part of the Pliensbachian and Toarcian stages of the Early Jurassic; it is not wholly Upper Lias, although the familiar Toarcian field ammonites are associated with its upper part.
The Marlstone formed a durable local building stone known as Moolham Stone. Its iron-rich, shelly limestone contrasts with the pale or weathered ammonite-bearing limestones, marls and clay partings above. Changes in sedimentation and erosion produced marked differences between nearby quarries: some horizons thin, disappear or survive only as nodules. A thin formation can therefore represent a long and interrupted geological history.
The modern collecting surfaces are ploughsoil and weathered limestone brash, rather than an intact geological face. Cultivation mixes fragments and obscures the original relationships between beds. No defensible measured, numbered succession is established for either field route, so a loose ammonite cannot be assigned to a particular quarry bed merely from where it lies in a furrow.
Charles Moore’s nineteenth-century section at Moolham described worked Marlstone followed by thin clay and stone layers and a higher alternating limestone-and-clay succession. He found important differences at a historical Kingstone quarry, including the reappearance of beds absent at Moolham. The later Geological Survey recorded the Marlstone ridge from Pretwood Hill through Dowlish to Kingstone and separate faunas from the old Moolham quarry. These are valuable local comparisons, but they are not measurements of the two present fields.
Regionally, the Beacon Limestone rests above the Dyrham Formation and is overlain by the Bridport Sand Formation. The latter can begin with muddy or silty beds rather than an immediate sand-on-limestone contact. These bounding formations provide context; their complete thicknesses and exposures have not been demonstrated on either collecting route. The historical photograph caption below retains an older numerical age estimate: the stage-based Pliensbachian–Toarcian framework used here is more appropriate for the mixed field material.
Detailed geology of the fields and separately identified historical Kingstone–Moolham quarries
Two separate field routes are covered: the church-side path from Kingstone towards Dowlish Wake, and the Long Close–Moolham Lane route from south Ilminster. Both expose loose, disturbed material rather than a continuous quarry face. The formation-and-member framework applies to the local bedrock; the measured horizons below belong to explicitly identified historical quarries and are not a numbered log of either modern field.
LIAS GROUP
The relevant Lower Jurassic framework comprises the Dyrham Formation below the Beacon Limestone and the Bridport Sand Formation above. Their presence in the regional succession does not mean their complete thicknesses are exposed along either field path.
Beacon Limestone Formation
The formation includes Pliensbachian and Toarcian rocks and was historically called the Junction Bed. Its lower ferruginous limestone and upper ammonite-rich limestone, marl and clay intervals record an interrupted marine succession. The formal lower boundary is non-sequential; erosion and condensation also cause local changes within the formation. The 1958 Geological Survey traced the Marlstone ridge from Pretwood Hill through West Dowlish and Dowlish Wake towards Kingstone.
Marlstone Rock Member
In the Wessex Basin this is a member of the Beacon Limestone Formation. It should not be confused with formation-rank use of the Marlstone name in other basins. Ferruginous, shelly limestone supplied the local building stone known as Moolham Stone. The regional age extends from the latest Pliensbachian into the earliest Toarcian, but no field-specific thickness is established for the loose collecting material.
Barrington Member
The younger, Toarcian part of the Beacon Limestone consists of micritic and bioclastic limestone, locally poorly ooidal, with common ammonites and clay or marl interbeds. Barrington Member is the preferred modern name. It provides the best-supported framework for the usual Toarcian ammonites in the ploughsoil, but a loose specimen cannot be tied to a numbered bed from the separate Barrington or Seavington quarry logs.
Higher and lower contacts. The underlying Dyrham Formation contains silty and sandy mudstones. The overlying Bridport Sand can begin with mudstone or silt as well as sand above its non-sequential basal contact. No precise local thickness or directly exposed contact is assigned to either modern field route.
Historical Moolham quarry: Moore’s ascending section. Moore’s 1865–1866 account describes a quarry between Pretwood and Moolham. The following five intervals run upwards from worked Marlstone into the overlying Upper Lias. They preserve the measurements of that historical quarry, not the thickness of the Long Close field.
Worked Marlstone, 12 ft (about 3.66 m). Eight or nine beds supplied building stone noted for being workable when quarried and durable after use. The individual beds were not measured separately, so this is one recorded package.
Lower greyish clay, 6 in (about 0.152 m). A thin clay parting overlies the worked Marlstone. Moore supplied no separate fossil assemblage for it.
Thin stone bed, 3 in (about 0.076 m). A stone layer separates the two clay partings. The account gives neither a more specific rock description nor a bed-specific fauna.
Upper grey clay, 6 in (about 0.152 m). This is a second distinct parting. It cannot be labelled a Leptaena bed, since Moore explicitly reported those beds absent at Moolham.
Alternating Upper Lias stone and clay, 5 ft (about 1.524 m). Thin limestone and clay layers contain the characteristic cephalopods of the Upper Lias. The account does not divide this package into individually measured beds.
Fauna of the upper historical Middle Lias. Moore described Rhynchonella serrata, R. tetrahedra, Terebratula sub-puncata as spelled in the source, sponges and crustacean claws. These are historical names and observations associated with the upper Middle Lias at Moolham; the text does not securely attach all of them to one of the five measured intervals above.
Absent intervals at Moolham. Moore found both the Leptaena beds and the saurian-and-fish interval absent, and interpreted their loss as erosion before the higher cephalopod-bearing beds accumulated. This important omission distinguishes Moolham from Strawberry Bank. It does not establish a fish or reptile bed in the present field.
Historical Kingstone quarry: Leptaena beds. At the eastern end of Moore’s quarry traverse, in Kingstone village, these beds reappeared. Their exact thickness and the pit’s relationship to the present church-side field were not established, so neither a neighbouring thickness nor its full fauna is transferred to the field.
Kingstone’s reduced nodular horizon. The interval Moore called the saurian zone survived as strongly flattened nodules, some only the size of a crown coin. He found no organisms in them. The historical name describes a correlation and is not evidence of a Kingstone vertebrate discovery.
Higher Kingstone cephalopod beds and intervening quarries. Upper Lias cephalopod-bearing beds lay above the reduced nodular horizon. In several quarries between Moolham and Kingstone, Moore instead found the Upper Lias completely removed, leaving Marlstone at the surface. These differences demonstrate lateral erosion and variable preservation, rather than a uniform layer-cake beneath every adjoining field.
Moolham Farm quarry in the 1958 Survey. The quarry north of the road was already largely hidden by buildings, so Moore’s full section could no longer be recognised. The remaining Marlstone yielded the brachiopods Aulacothyris moorei, Lobothyris punctata, Quadratirhynchia aff. quadrata, Prionorhynchia serrata and Zeilleria sp. cf. subnumismalis. The qualifiers belong to the published determinations and should remain with them.
The same Marlstone assemblage included an astraeoid coral, Chlamys textoria, Entolium liasianum, Gryphaea sp., an unnamed new form listed as Lima (Plagiostoma), Pleuromya costata, Pseudopecten aequivalvis, P. dentatus, Pleurotomaria sp., Passaloteuthis species and indeterminate Pleuroceras. This is the historical quarry fauna, not a claim that every fossil occurs on both field routes.
Limestone above the Marlstone in the same quarry. The Survey recorded a separate assemblage indicating the historical falcifer Subzone: Harpoceras species compared with falcifer, Harpoceratoides strangewaysi, Dactylioceras cf. vermis, Murleyiceras murleyi and Nodicoeloceras sp. cf. helianthoides. Their stratigraphic separation from the shelly Marlstone fauna is important even though a complete modern field log is unavailable.
1911 quarry material. A Geologists’ Association visit to working Moolham Quarry found Hildoceras, Harpoceras and Dactylioceras, together with a brachiopod reported under the historical name Rhynchonella bouchardi, in disturbed Upper Lias material above the Marlstone. No fish remains were found. This independently supports the local ammonite association without locating those specimens in either present field.
Moolham type specimen. BGS specimen GSM 49349 was named Phaularpites exiguus by S. S. Buckman in 1928. Howarth’s 2013 account illustrates it as a microconch, or smaller adult form, of Harpoceras falciferum. Its provenance is Moolham, without a sufficiently precise find location to connect it to either modern collecting field.
Limits of comparison. Woodward’s detailed Tortwood Hill log belongs to a separately described historical section whose exact relationship to these routes is uncertain. The measured Barrington and Seavington sections, Strawberry Bank vertebrates and the field exposed by a 1945 storm near Knott Oak House are also different localities. They help explain the district, but do not supply missing beds or discoveries for the Kingstone and Long Close fields.
References.
Moore (1865–1866), Middle and Upper Lias of south-west England, pp. 134–135.
Wilson and colleagues (1958), Bridport and Yeovil Geological Survey memoir, pp. 53–54.
BGS Lexicon: Beacon Limestone Formation and its Barrington and Marlstone Rock members.
Richardson and colleagues (1911), Moolham excursion.
Howarth (2013), ammonite taxonomy.
SAFETY
Working fields have uneven furrows, slippery mud, hidden holes and trip hazards. Gates and stiles may require care, and roadside sections need attention to traffic. Supervise children and choose a route suited to everyone’s mobility.
Keep clear of farm machinery and active cultivation. Follow the Countryside Code around livestock, close gates as directed and do not obstruct gateways or private drives. Leave crops and field margins undisturbed, and turn back if the signed route or agreed collecting area cannot be used safely.
EQUIPMENT
For an authorised surface visit, sturdy boots, a camera, notebook and small hand lens are sufficient. No picks, spades or hammering are needed to search the ground as described here.
Wrap permitted finds separately in paper or soft padding and carry them in a rigid container. Support incomplete ammonites with attached limestone rather than pulling the fossil away from its matrix.
CLEANING AND TREATING
Photograph and label each specimen before cleaning. Start with a soft brush on loose soil, checking that weathered shell, ribs or mineral coatings are not being removed. Avoid soaking fragile or crumbly material and allow damp pieces to dry slowly.
An ammonite may preserve only one good face, with hard limestone attached behind it. Mechanical tools can damage the whorl as easily as they remove matrix, so do not begin air-tool or engraving work without assessing the specimen and gaining suitable preparation experience. Avoid acids, bleach and routine varnishing. Consolidation is a condition-dependent decision, not something every fossil automatically needs or can safely do without.
IDENTIFY YOUR FINDS
Need help identifying a fossil? Share clear photos, where you found it and its size with the community.
FURTHER READING
BGS Lexicon: Beacon Limestone Formation
BGS Lexicon: Barrington Member
BGS Lexicon: Marlstone Rock Member in the Wessex Basin
Charles Moore: Middle and Upper Lias, including historical Kingstone and Moolham quarries
Geological Survey: geology around Bridport and Yeovil
Geologists’ Association 1911 excursion: Moolham Quarry
Ilminster Forum: Dowlish Wake and Kingstone walking route
Somerset Council: public rights of way
ACCESS RIGHTS
Follow the signed public paths and check current Somerset Council information for diversions or closures. A right to walk along a path does not authorise roaming across private fields or removing fossils. Obtain the landowner’s or occupier’s permission before collecting, including loose material, and follow the area, timing and quantity limits agreed.
Do not enter growing crops or interfere with agricultural work. No current blanket collecting permission is established for these fields, and previous reports of permission refusals should not be treated as either a universal ban or permission to try another field. The church drive and private farm accesses are not assumed to be public parking.
It is important to follow our ‘Code of Conduct’ when collecting fossils or visiting any site. Please also read our ‘Terms and Conditions‘
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