Sand

This sand is from the collection of the late Ivor Treby. He collected it on the upper terrace of Lion Rock Fortress in Sigiriya.

The Lion Rock appears to lie within the Highland Complex of the Sri Lankan Pre Cambrian metamorphic basement, around 2 billion years old. The complex includes metamorphic rocks of silimanite grade. The sand appears to result from the weathering of a quartzofeldspathic metamorphic rock. Images of the Lion Rock suggest a massive lthology with some degree of foliation.

The sand is made up of iron-stained quartz grains, they are transparent to translucent and angular to sub-angular. The feldspar is translucent, colourless and cleaved and white altered adhering to some quartz grains. Biotite as tiny flakes enclosed in a few quartz grains. Rare pink grains are possibly garnet but no crystal form. There is also a scatter of black magnetic grains.

Ivor was a biochemistry teacher and poet with over 400 published poems. He considered himself to be a gay literary activist.

Ivor took early retirement in the 1980s and dedicated his time to researching two Victorian/Edwardian women poets who wrote under the pseudonym Michael Field. He also spent much of the next 20 years travelling abroad. Wherever he went he collected samples of sand and sediment.

He was meticulously organised. His personal archive of poems, postcards, letters and research is held by the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. For more information on Ivor and the archive please see their website http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/modern/treby/treby.html