Purbeck stone Purbeck stone Purbeck stone refers to building stone taken from a series of limestone beds found in the Upper Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous Purbeck Group, found on the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset in southern England. The best known variety of this stone is Purbeck Marble. The stone has been quarried since at least Roman times up to the present day. The Purbeck Group is a sequence of sedimentary rocks that were deposited in a shallow freshwater to brackish lagoonal setting. It ranges in age from Tithonian to Berriasian. Limestone beds are developed at various levels throughout the sequence, each with
Lutetian Limestone was the city's name in ancient times. Between the 17th and 19th centuries, Lutetian limestone was extracted by tunneling through hill-sides south of Paris. The stone comprises many of the grandest Paris buildings from the 17th century onwards, including parts of the Louvre, the Place de la Concorde and Les Invalides. Haussmann's grand renovation of Paris (1853-1870), which provided a sweeping and uniform style and an elusive coloring — ranging from bright white to butter-yellow to a dull nicotine-yellow/grey — for the city, relied upon buildings faced with Lutetian limestone. In the 20th century, open-cast quarries were developed which uncovered