Fieldstone

The term Feldstein referred to in the architecture and the building a natural stone and building materials for the purpose of field stone construction; rarely it is used as a synonym to read stone.

Pebbles are reading stones and subordinate in the open pit ( " quarries " ) derived sediment from glacial unconsolidated rocks in northeast Germany, the block packs the Baltic country back. Field stones as reading stones are lying in meadows, pastures and fields bricks and blocks, which are read and collected at the field edges or worn. In the northern Central and Eastern Europe they are mostly well- rounded by glacial transport and can not be layers in the rule, but were collected in field heaps and ramparts. In the regions that are covered with glacial unconsolidated rocks, the boulders are the only solid rock. They served in these regions frequently as a building material. It also stones of megalithic tombs were used and destroyed the grave sites.

Origin of field stones

The pebbles are boulders that were transported approach of the glacial glaciers from Scandinavia and were deposited during the melting of the glaciers. Due to the glacial transport, they are usually well rounded. The proportion of metamorphic and igneous rocks is in accordance with the forthcoming in the Scandinavian region of origin usually very high; Sedimentary rocks are therefore represented very subordinate. Were Weathering, erosion and soil mechanical processes, but also by the tillage and they are brought to the surface.

You are in the glacial unconsolidated rocks but not uniformly distributed. One finds, for example, field stones often on ground moraines or end moraines. Before the colonization of these areas in northeast Germany (Brandenburg, Mecklenburg- Western Pomerania, Saxony -Anhalt) in the 12th and 13th centuries there were many areas literally strewn with boulders that had to be eliminated in the reclamation.

Field stones as building material

In Brandenburg (including Neumark ), Saxony -Anhalt, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Schleswig -Holstein and Lower Saxony field stones were used in particular for the construction of stone churches in the 12th and 15th centuries. The show page was initially beaten to blocks. In later buildings only split field stones were mostly used. Also the construction of the medieval towns of large quantities of boulders required ( walls, houses, roads).

In the 19th century, field stones were used in Brandenburg and in northern Saxony-Anhalt also for the construction of houses (eg farm buildings ) or by enclosing walls. However, they are not beaten parallelepipeds, but cleaved only once or twice, and the outer surfaces of the walls then " verzwickelt " ie the gaps between the stones filled with rock fragments.

In the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century field stones were used in a big way for the construction of highways, where they were processed to bounce bricks and paving stones. Field stones were mined to even out the moraines in so-called " quarries " or " boulder diggings " In the Uckermark. Furthermore, gravel dredging land and gravel plants use in Northern Germany those deposits. During this time there were in Germany numerous mining operations in the former provinces of East Prussia, West Prussia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, and Posen. Significant degradation, it was, for example in the former Angerburg and by the previous Uckermärkischen stone works with its offices within Fiirstenwalde at Prenzlau and in Feldberg ..

Conservation and Natural Heritage

Field heaps are considered rare or valuable habitats and are therefore protected under nature conservation law in Brandenburg, Schleswig -Holstein and Lower Saxony, as they are an important habitat for reptiles, insects and plants. Often from a field Cairn is also developing a small copse or thicket.