Blue John Cavern travel guide

The Blue John Cavern is one of the four show caves in Castleton, Derbyshire, England.
The semi-precious mineral "Blue John" or "Derbyshire Spar" is mined from this cave. Although the cavern works as a show cave, the mineral is still worked here during the winter months. The miners who work the remaining seams act as guides for the underground tours.
Blue John is a blue/purple and white/yellow banded variety of fluorite which locals will tell you is found nowhere else in the world other than this cave and the nearby Treak Cliff Cavern. However, blue fluorite occurs widely throughout Derbyshire and especially in the Ashover and Crich areas. It also occurs where other fluorspar deposits have been mined and so may be found in County Durham (especially Weardale), Cornwall and Wales as well as throughout the world. Indeed, similar banded blue and white/yellow fluorite is now being imported into the UK from China and sold as coming from Castleton. Other deposits of banded blue fluorite occur in Nevada (in the USA) and Southern Iran. The Iranian blue-and-yellow-banded fluorspar has turned up in Roman grave-goods (e.g.as two cups near the Turkish/Syrian border) alongside the Persia to Rome trade route, and this has fed the myth that the Romans exported Blue John from Castleton. They did not. Neither, as often claimed, were two vases made from Castleton Blue John ever excavated at Pompeii. (...) more....

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