But the most famous geological finds at Lyme fell to a working-class girl, Mary Arming (1799-1847), who was later famed as "the fossil woman," praised as "the greatest
fossilist the world ever knew," and commemorated by a stained glass window placed in Lyme's church of St.
Although the Hilton mine closed commercially in the 1950's, some of its bat-infested underground workings are still theoretically accessible--unfortunately on the edge of a British military installation which makes access, shall we say, "awkward." Don Edwards, "
Fossilist & Petrifactioneer" as his card calls him, of Tideswell Dale Rock Shop (Commercial Road, Tideswell, Derbyshire, U.K.) showed up in the "International Room" of the Main Show at Denver with a few gorgeous clusters of lustrous, transparent, yellow-orange, cubic fluorite crystals, the individual cubes reaching 5 cm on edge, and the clusters reaching 12 X 12 X 12 cm.
