Stonesfield

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A small settlement in Oxfordshire in the Cotswolds region of central England, historically known for its slate quarries
2. A village located in west Oxfordshire in England, famous in the 19th century for the extraction and production of roofing slate
3. A locality in Oxfordshire, England, historically notable as a centre for quarrying and working a distinctive fine-grained slate stone

Etymology: Stonesfield is a village in Oxfordshire, England, and its name is plain Old English: "stān" (stone) and "feld" (open land), so something like "stony open ground." The name likely describes the rocky land around the village, though the exact sense is an inference from the parts. The village is more famous for the rock beneath it. Its local limestone, known as Stonesfield slate, split into thin layers that were quarried for roofing and contained fossils of unusual richness. Early naturalists found bones there, including a lower jaw that William Buckland used to describe Megalosaurus, one of the first dinosaurs ever named. The same beds also yielded some of the earliest known fossil mammal remains, so a village name meaning "stone field" became attached to some of the most important finds in early palaeontology.