Wesley Mine, Westbury on Trym, Bristol, England, UKi

Regional Level Types
Wesley Mine	Mine
Westbury on Trym	Suburb
Bristol	County
England	Constituent Country
UK	Country

Colour: bright orange

Description: A single grain about 2mm in length (initially identified as parkinsonite) embedded in calcite. The specimen, now registered at the NHM as specimen BM 1989,93, was identified by WDXRF. A further "orange parkinsonite" exists at the NHM as BM 1989,94, which will be investigated in due course.

Type Locality:

Colour: red

Description: all the “orange parkinsonites” from “Wesley Mine” are likely to be kombatite and not parkinsonite, which probably corresponds only to the deeper blood-red samples.

Habit: Fibrous

Colour: white, clear, pale yellow

Description: The 'fibrous oxychloride' mentioned in Alabaster's 1989 paper on this locality was found to be rickturnerite, after this mineral had been described from Torr Works (Merehead) Quarry (q.v.). At the Wesley Mine, rickturnerite forms small masses of white fibres, some of which are stained yellow, presumably by a Pb oxide mineral.

Description: Rumsey (2008):
"Probable vanadium rich parkinsonites are known to exist from Kombat Mine, Namibia (Welch et al., 1996; C. Stanley, personal communication) so it is feasible that some samples from "Wesley Mine" may also fall in between the two species. Interestingly, as Mo(VI) and V(V) occupy different structural sites within the two minerals, it is thought that V-rich parkinsonites are composed of intercalated, yet, distinct, layers of kombatite and parkinsonite at an atomic scale, and does not represent a solid solution. However, as As(V) and V(V) do occupy the same site, it is possible that the As-rich, Mo-poor analyses observed in this study (Table 1) may dominantly represent true solid solution between kombatite and sahlinite, rather than intercalated layers of each. After calculating site occupancy from wt% data, analysis indicates that the vanadium site is occupied here by 48.4% V, 46.2% As, 3.6% Cr and 1.7% Si. This is very nearly As(V) dominant and opens up the possibility that other examples from the "Wesley Mine" may be As dominant and would thus be correctly identified as the rare mineral sahlinite." "After the submission of this paper, qualitative EDX analysis upon an irregular fragment of a similar grain with a yellowish hue on the second specimen, revealed a chemistry dominated by Pb, Cl, As & O without any vanadium. This grain is now a candidate for an occurrence of sahlinite at "Wesley Mine" and both WDX and XRD analysis will be performed upon it at a later date. These results will be published in a future volume of the Journal of the Russell Society."