Table Mountain Sandstone (Geological Formation)

As Table Mountain sandstone (English Table Mountain Sandstone ) in South Africa is called a sedimentary sequence of different quartzitic sandstones. It extends from Nieuwoudtville on the Table Mountain region near Cape Town to the tip of the Cape Peninsula and in the region of the distant Port Elizabeth. Within lithostratigraphic correlations in South Africa, he is part of the Table Mountain Group, which belongs to her age after the middle Paleozoic and is part of the Cape Supergroup.

Description

The Table Mountain Sandstone has in the area of the Table Mountain a thickness of about 550 meters. The bottom and about 50 meters thick layer consists of reddish sandstone deposits and shales of Graafwater lineup and is located on an older granite bed (Cape Granite ) on. Furthermore lie in a horizontal deposition about 500 meters light gray sandstone of the Peninsula formation. The sandstone contains conglomeratic and debris diamiktitische shares. At other outcrops of sandstone emerges with brown and beige color.

Its date of origin is located in the portions between Ordovician and Devonian, about 475-400 million years ago. The sandstone layers are an important part of the mountain range in the Western Cape and in the western section of the Eastern Cape ( Cape Fold Belt ).

Use

Use as a stone is compared with by other South African sandstones only to a small extent. The most important mining sites were located in Ceres, Muizenberg, Kloof Nek, Fish Hoek. In the area of Cape Town, there were only insignificant mining sites. The sandstones here most commonly used for the architecture of this city come from quarries in the urban area from older strata ( Malmesbury Group, around 550 million years old ).

Application examples in Cape Town include:

• First National Bank (facade )
• Metropolitan Methodist Church (light beige ashlar stones of the facade)
• St. George 's Cathedral (facade )