Connemara Blue

There has been a sensational recent find of fluorite in Connemara, County Galway, in the Republic of Ireland.

TVM has been given exclusive access to the locality and has been given first refusal to the material released by the owners.

Map of Connemara, County Galway

The Connemara area is west of Galway, and is a well known area for its fluorine enriched granite and minor fluorite occurrences here are widespread.

Granite Quarry (old photo), Connemara, County Galway

This discovery was made in 2016 and has provided some incredible specimens of fluorite, in our opinion and quoted in the property's geoligical report "museum standard".

Fluorite Crystals to 6cm on a Matrix 35+cm Across

The locality is as typical of hundreds of small workings into the Connemara granite for stone, this one is transected by a North-South vertical fault with mineralisation running along its edges and into the granite.

The slippage and expansion along the joints in the rock have provided adequate space for some uncommonly large crystals in what we can see are two possibly, three phases of crystallisation.

Mineralisation with the Quarry

Vertical Faulting	Galena & Fluorite High Up in the Wall

The first or smaller phase is generally octahedral, clear blue to dark blue in colour much with cubic over growth, and some green zoning.

Further development has occured resulting in scant large cubic crystals with modified edges, some with "alien eye" green phantoms or clear blue octahedrons within.

Some of the hybrid cube octahedral crystals create fantastic "Sputnik" shapes.

The final phase of mineralisation is perhaps the strangest and not seen before. Large, up to 12cm pale blue cubic crystals internally clear but with frosted slightly etched faces, each with pale green colour tinting at the corners. These crystals have developed over the earler cubic form and show a deep blue phantom within.

Other minerals are present in different combinations in veins parallel to the main fault, these include:

Quartz
Epidote*
Calcite
Baryte*
Galena
Sphalerite
Chalcopyrite
Pyrite*
Cerussite
?Linarite

* Minerals are predominantly not in the main fluorite vein.

Minerals in Situ

Flanking Vein of Epidote & Calcite	Octahedral Fluorite with Pocket Mud

By far the most spectacular are the fluorite formations covering granite blocks up to meter across.

Large Specimens of Fluorite in the TVM Warehouse

We acquired specimens in December 2016 and have recently been across to inspect and understand the topography.

Below are a series of photos of some of the different habits and aspects of specimens, these will be available via TVM on the e-Rocks website shortly.

Finally, we were asked to publish this from the quarry owners.