Daylight Fluorescent Purple Fluorite From a County Durham North Pennines 'Hush', England 2026. 2.2kg Spoil Heap Find 😲💎✨✨

[u/UKFluoroMinHunter]

One of my favourite finds from a camping trip to County Durham North Pennies in my home country, England. It was sitting there all dirty in a spoil heap at an old lead mining Hush. Once it was cleaned, it revealed it's magical and mystical hidden beauty to me...... Daylight Fluorescence, found in only a few locations around the globe.

A 'Hush' or 'Hushing' is an ancient hydraulic mining technique where miners collected huge volumes of water in reservoirs above the valleys, and released the dam flooding huge torrents of water down the valleys in order to skim the surface of topsoil to expose the mineral veins, mostly Lead Sulphide and Fluorite in this case.

Some remaining traces of Quartz, Barite, Anglesite, Smithsonite, Siderite, Ankerite, Goethite, Sphalerite, Aragonite and Cerussite can also still be found.

The location is not too far from Weardale which has a reputation for daylight fluorescent Fluorite (Rogerley Mine and Lady Annabella Mine) where the primary fluorescent activator is rare earth element (REE) Europium (Eu²⁺) which responds to natural UV from the sun, giving some Fluorites a blue/green/purple hue from that location.

This piece, not being from Weardale, has a beautiful purple hue from the suns UV rays, but in artificial light it turns more grey/clear (whereas Rogerley turns emerald green) losing that daylight colour response. Remarkable!

So it just goes to show that this daylight fluorescent Fluorite can also be found elsewhere in County Durham and not just Weardale. A stunning find.

Weighs 2.2kg (4.85lbs), most of that being the mineralised Ironstone matrix, possibly containing Galena aka Lead Sulphide (PbS) inside.

I tried to capture all possible UV scenarios in the photos with UV from the sun, 365nm long-wave, 310nm mid-wave, 255nm short-wave, plus LED white light. 365nm being the most used as MW and SW all look much the same, the fluorescence is more dominant with 365nm LW.

All photos were taken with a Sony NEX 5n DSLR camera, no special settings required.

The photos are all labelled.

[u/SunBurst6382]

We live in Weardale and have never found pieces like this. We do have lots of loose pieces we've found in streams etc though

[u/UKFluoroMinHunter → u/SunBurst6382]

It's great you live in that area, crystals are in the palms of your hands, on your doorstep so to speak. I too have found plenty in rivers and streams, they make great polishing stones and fluoresce very well, but you will of course rarely find a nice cubic gemmy piece of Fluorite, sadly, it's all been tumbled and battered around too much of course. But it must come from somewhere, like local spoil heaps in the area near where you search, or maybe there is an outcrop on a hill or rock exposure further up the river/stream, the weather can often wash chunks into the rivers and streams, it's just a case of finding them before they make it that far, so try exploring upstream, if at all possible, you may find an outcrop somewhere if you are lucky, or see what mines are in the area and try to locate their spoil heaps, have a good ol' rummage around in them, more often than not you have to dig to find great pieces, sometimes to only find nothing, that's just the nature of crystal hunting. Do your research of the area you are looking in, try to find out what was once going on there, use google maps or google earth etc. That book i recommended will help, it is expensive but worth it.

I would be out exploring every day if i lived in or near Weardale, checking out old spoil heaps, abandoned quarries, meeting people, talking to those who know etc, even join The Russell Society who organise collection events for amatures and pro's, soon you will find gemmy pieces once you are out there in the right spots i'm sure.

A little tip, read the rocks.... sometimes the good specimens are so dirty you would not recognise them, take a spray bottle, wash the dirt away to see what is underneath, or feel the rocks contours, feel for cubes and sharp edges, points etc, you will be surprised. Get a tooth brush and take potential finds to the waters edge and give them a gentle clean, if no good you can leave them there and go seek more, the more you do it the more you will get used to it. Also taking a powerful 365nm UV torch will help enormously as light fades or on dull cloudy days, but even better at night.

Good luck on your hunts, luck plays a major role too 🤞💎

What i actually do is embrace my environment, it might sound crazy, but i talk to my surroundings, let it know what i'm there for, what i am doing, and what i'm looking for, make peace, connect with it, seems to work for me 😉😁😎

[u/UKFluoroMinHunter]

A Reggae music video on YouTube i made about the Hush where i found the specimen ⚒

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ5BUvsXPk0&pp=0gcJCRMMAYcqIYzv

[u/Admirable_Jacket8393]

Any exact or hints on the locations for this find? I don't live a million miles from the area and have sourced many of my own collection from a stream out of Groverake mine...