Distillery Fields, County Cork

Underlying many of the hills of County Cork, this rock formed around 380 million years ago as a flood deposit on the ancient continent of Laurussia.

This specimen may be small but it was actually extracted from the bedrock on site during excavation of the geophysics garden, located at the northeast corner of the Cork Enterprise Centre.

The term Old Red Sandstone was introduced in early geological literature to describe a group of rocks, many with a distinctive red-brown colouration, found throughout Ireland and Britain. This distinguished them from a similar but younger group of rocks, found mainly in Britain, known as the New Red Sandstone.