THE BUILDING STONE INDUSTRY IN BRITAIN PAST AND PRESENT

Graham Lott

Introduction
Building stone is sometimes described as dimension stone or freestone. It can be defined as natural stone which, because of the relative uniformity of its physical properties, can be cut and shaped to specified block sizes. The term principally includes stone used for building (ashlar, rough block, paving and roofing) but also those used for monumental and decorative purposes. Stone for monumental or decorative use is selected for greater uniformity of colour and texture, and is generally produced to a higher standard and may consequently command a significantly higher price in the market place. Aggressive marketing from foreign stone producers and in the case of the monumental stone industry the lack of suitable stone varieties, particularly marbles, has seen stone production decline markedly in the UK since the 19th century. Britain produces building stone from sedimentary rocks (sandstones and limestones), coarse and finely crystalline igneous rocks (granites, dolerites, basalts etc.) and some metamorphic rocks (slates and marbles).

Geological map of the UK

1. Britain's building stones: a brief history

A stone is defined by the Oxford Dictionary 'as a piece of rock of any shape usually detached from the earth's crust ............usable in building or road making or as a missile'. In Britain we are fortunate to have one of the most diverse assemblages of natural stones in the world which includes igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rock types. The oldest rocks in Britain (the Lewisian of Scotland) have been dated as 2.7 billion years old. Our youngest lithified rocks, which have been used for building purposes are of Tertiary age (c. 2 million years).

Throughout our history we have used our stones in a wide variety of ways, we have gathered, quarried, cut, crushed and carved them and an appreciation of their usefulness either based on their durability or on their varied colours in ornamental and decorative ways are commonly evident from earliest times. In prehistoric times hard stones provided durable primitive tools and rough shelters were built from stone slabs.

Stones large and small were carefully arranged to define places of worship or burial and stones have been long used to mark the site of important meeting places.

Much of this early history of our stone industry has been forgotten or lost, which is unfortunate when its importance to our development as a nation is considered. The earliest use of stone in the UK was as primitive stone tools or weapons. Quernstones for grinding corn etc, sharpening stones (hone- or whet-stones), stone hand axes, spear and arrowheads, for example, are common artefacts in many ancient archaeological sites throughout Britain. The earliest housing often took the form of rock caves or stone built shelters. There are many examples of the use of stones to mark important places of ritual significance ranging from the megaliths of Stonehenge to numerous smaller stone circles like Castlerigg in the Lake District. In prehistoric times stone was also commonly used for prestigious burial chambers as at West Kennet and Wayland Smithy in Wiltshire.

The Romans were probably the first people to bring and use sophisticated quarrying methods to obtain stone for building in Britain. Many Roman villas, towns and forts were built with stone and some used stone slates for their roofs (e.g. Wroxeter; Caerwent Fort, Margidunum). The Romans brought quarrying skills, already developed from a long experience of working stone in the rest of their empire, some of which are still used in todays' quarries. They were among the earliest builders to use ashlar or cut stone blocks for their more important structures. The Roman roads of Britain have foundations of stone with stone cobbled or paved surfaces as at Wheeldale Moor, North. Yorkshire. One of their crowning achievements as stone users must be the construction, incorporating a variety of locally quarried stones, of Hadrian' s Wall, built between AD 122-130 and marking the northern limits of their power.

The departure of the Romans was followed by a period of gradually increasing Anglo-Saxon influence. The Anglo-Saxons used wood for much of their building but were well aware of the usefulness of stone. With the spread of Christianity they began to use stone more widely, particularly in their churches (e.g. Brixworth Church; Repton Crypt). The many surviving elaborately carved Saxon stone crosses and monuments are testament to their skill as stone carvers (Bewcastle Cross, Carboniferous sandstone from Middle Border Group; the Leeds cross, Carboniferous, Millstone Grit sandstone) and their appreciation of its durability. Even the Viking invaders of the 8th century, portrayed by many history books as unsophisticated barbarians, showed an appreciation of stone for decoration and ornamentation and copied the Anglo-Saxon penchant for carved stone crosses (e.g. Gosport Cross) and also produced elaborate stone sepulchral monuments like the Brompton Hogbacks (Carbonifereous Millstone Grit).

The Norman invasion in the 11th century brought with it a resurgence in stone building work in Britain and marked the beginning of a period during which many of our most splendid stone buildings were constructed. Their influence is evident from the incorporation of many familiar building and architectural terms from the old French into the English language e.g. mason from maçon - builder; aiseler - ashlar ; slate -esclat - to split; voussoir – wedge-shaped stone in the apex of an arch. Determined to show the restive British who was in control they began building fortifications on a large scale. At first they preferred to import the stones which they were most familiar with for these structures, such as Middle Jurassic limestone from the Boulogne and Caen quarries e.g. White Tower of London. Eventually, however, they also recognised the quality of British stones and, as their influences spread, began to exploit a wide variety of local stones for castles and other building projects e.g. Conisborough.-Permian Magnesian Limestone; Goodrich - Devonian sandstones. The spur which the Normans gave to Britain's indigenous stone industry was unprecedented.

As they further consolidated their grip on the country they also commenced the building of the cathedrals at Canterbury (Caen, Marquise and Quarr stones (Tatton-Brown 1990), Durham (Carboniferous sandstone), Lincoln (Middle Jurassic Lincolnshire Limestone) and Winchester (Quarr & Bath Oolite (Tatton-Brown 199?) and monasteries such as Rievaulx (Middle Jurassic sandstones and Upper Jurassic limestones (Senior 199?) and Tintern (Devonian sandstones (Lott & Barclay 1998)).

This building 'boom' continued during the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Edward I in his single-minded determination to bring the remainder of his unruly subjects to heel, continued this great Norman building tradition by constructing a series of massive castles across North Wales (Aberystwyth, Harlech and Conwy - Lower Palaeozoic sandstones, Beaumaris and Caernarvon - Carboniferous limestones (Neaverson 1947). The scale of this work programme was so great and the number of masons conscripted to work in it so large (400 at Beaumaris), that it must have disrupted royal building programmes elsewhere for some considerable time.

During  the early 15th century many of England’s most ornate churches were built using the profits of its thriving wool trade (Long Melford and Lavenham (Lincolnshire Limestone & Flint), Suffolk; Northleach and Chipping Camden (Middle Jurassic, Cotswold Stone), Gloucestershire. Financial patronage for the building of such new parish churches evidently ensured salvation. Most ordinary people, however, still built their houses from wood harvested from the still extensive forests.

Not every English King, was by any means as interested in building on such a grand scale and by the mid-16th century the focus of attention changed. In 1538 the split between the King Henry VIII and the Pope in Rome precipitated one of the 'greatest acts of vandalism' in our history. As a consequence of his break with Rome the King ordered the dissolution of all the monastic houses in Britain and the selling off (or slighting, to make them unusable) of their buildings and estates to his court favourites or to the highest bidder. This process allowed many of the growing class of wealthy 'entrepreneurs' to purchase grand houses and become part of a new aristocracy. Some of our most spectacular stone buildings, rivalling or even surpassing our surviving great cathedrals, were almost completely demolished by their new owners. Others were converted to new grand houses e.g. Woburn, Calke and Newstead. For many decades the monasteries became new 'quarries' as their stone and other building materials were robbed or nowadays 'recycled' for use elsewhere. Today abbey ruins like those at Glastonbury (Doulting Stone), Roche (Magnesian Limestone), Fountains (Middle Jurassic sandstone) Tintern and Jedburgh (Devonian sandstones (MacGregor & Eckford 1948)) allow us only a glimpse of what their largely unidentified medieval builders and masons could achieve.

The right to quarry stone was still very much under the control of the Crown into the early 17th century and the large scale use of stone for building was restricted to major royal or secular projects. The future of the Portland Stone Quarries was established at this time by the rebuilding of London following the disastrous Great Fire in 1666. The repercussions of this tragedy lead to many other towns and cities enforcing the using of stone for building and roofing to prevent further such calamities in their overcrowded, timber-framed, urban centres.

During the 17th century the continued rise of the prosperous yeoman (farmer) and the growth of the merchant or professional classes in the population led to the building of many more new stone 'Manor' houses e.g. Middleton Hall, Cumbria; New Hall, Elland (Millstone Grit), Yorkshire; Ightham Mote (Cretaceous, Kentish Ragstone), Kent. 

From the early 18th to the mid-19th century the gathering pace of industrial revolution, the growth of new industries and their associated and expanding rural and urban populations, all needing houses and places of work, allowed the stone quarrying industry began to expand accordingly. Ralph Allen, perhaps our first ‘great’ entrepreneur of the stone industry, developed and expanded the Bath Stone quarries at Combe Down which began to compete directly with the Crown controlled Portland Quarries in the London market by taking advantage of the fast growing canal newtork. In the dimension stone industry access to good transportation was clearly a major advantage for any quarry and many others took advantage of the network e.g. Anston quarries (Permian, Magnesian Limestone) used the Chesterfield canal. 

Quarrying now became a major industry in many other parts of the country, particularly, around the embryonic industrial centres of the midlands and north. In Yorkshire and Derbyshire the Carboniferous sandstones were quarried along almost every craggy outcrop. Some quarries, such as those at Bramley Fall, Elland Edge, Scotgate Head and Meanwood in Yorkshire and Stancliffe Darley Dale and Duke's Gritstone in Derbyshire and St Bees in Cumbria even began to export their stone abroad to the new 'colonies'.of the British Empire.

The late Victorian period saw a massive expansion of industrial and urban centres particularly in the north of England and Victorian architects selected and used British building stones to great and colourful effect. This was despite competition from the increasingly mechanised  and developing brick industry and other 'new' materials such as terracotta and faience, whose glazed surfaces were considered more resistant to atmospheric pollution. Confident and newly wealthy city councils determined that their most important civic buildings should be built of natural stone and a grand scale (e.g.Leeds Town Hall - Carboniferous Bramley Fall and Bolton Wood Stone; Nottingham City Hall - Portland Stone; Manchester Town Hall, Springwell Stone; Bradford Town Hall Carboniferous Spinkwell Stone and Sheffield Town Hall, Stoke Hall Stone from Grindleford, Derbyshire).

The durability of stone was also appreciated for large scale engineering projects. Many reservoirs were constructed to supply water to the new urban and industrial centres and stone was commonly chosen for the facing structure (Ladybower Reservoir, Grindleford Stone, Carboniferous Millstone Grit). The great railway viaducts of Settle and Carlisle railway were built of local Carboniferous limestones. As Britain's trade overseas expanded our major seaports, which needed hard, resistant sandstones and granites for quaysides and dockyards developed extensively, for example, in London (Aberdeenshire and Cornish granites) and Liverpool (Dalbeattie granite).

The stone industry did not, however, exclusively concern itself with quarrying for building stone. There were many other trades reliant on the production of stone for industrial purposes. In Northumberland, Yorkshire, Lancashire and Derbyshire the sandstones of the Carboniferous Millstone Grit were also worked for the eponymous millstones and the much larger pulp stones for the new paper mills. Both were exported all over the world at the height of the industries' development. The hardest stones were commonly used in massive blocks as beds for anchoring heavy engineering equipment in mills and factories. On a smaller, but equally important scale, the sandstone quarries provided provided grindstones for sharpening tools (essential to the growing cutlery industry in Sheffield). In the Wickersley area of Sheffield in 1858 there were at least 30 quarries producing a wide range of grindstones and sharpening stones for the cutlery industry (Hunt 1858). Smaller local trades concentrated on producing bakestones, cheese and cider presses, cisterns, paint mixing and water troughs etc also flourished.

On a more sombre note, stone has always had a special place in our culture with regard to burial sites. In earliest times the durability of stone usually meant that the most important burials used stone coffins, niches cut into stone bedrock or were marked by stone monuments. As our society has developed we have held on to this notion and to many people the selection of an attractive and durable headstone is still a very important family ritual. There have been many skilled artisans over the centuries who have produced elaborately carved headstones (e.g of Swithland Slate in Leicestershire), but this type of monumental stone craft probably reached its zenith in Britain during the Victorian period when highly ornate family tombs were often constructed as a measure and celebration of the success of a businessmen. Paramount among such monuments is the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park which uses over 13 different British stone varieties. In more recent times, however, perhaps the most poignant use of stone in this form must be one order placed with the Hopton Wood Quarries (Carboniferous Limestone, Derbyshire) for 120,000 gravestones for those soldiers who fell in the 1st World War Portland Stone. Similar orders were also filled from the Bath and Portland quarries for the dead of the 2nd World War.

Today, new stone buildings have become something of a rarity. Instead of the load-bearing block stone the demand is now for flawless thinly slabbed stone which can be used to clad core structures of concrete and steel. These slabs have to meet increasingly tight testing specifications and need to demonstrate very different strength and durabilty parameters to traditional building stones before they can be accepted by the building industry. Some of our best known stones may not reach these exacting standards but the variety of our stone resources suggest that new British stones could be found to take their place.

2. Quarrying and quarrying techniques

Britain's dimension stone quarrying industry is one in which a blend of traditional and modem techniques are still used to produce stone for building purposes. Even the hardest stone needs to be carefully removed from the quarry and prepared for use using extraction techniques that will not cause damage or weakening of the stone. This has ensured that tried and tested traditional methods of stone extraction are still widely used. Initial extraction is still commonly carried out by simple channelling using picks and power drills and percussive splitting (plug & feathers) or by sawing of the block from the bed.

Extraction by blasting techniques is rarely used in most sedimentary dimension stone quarries and only sparingly in the harder igneous and metamorphic slate quarries.

The strength and durability of stone is affected by many natural factors such as jointing, cleavage, bedding etc. and quarrying companies have generally learned, by experience, to take full advantage of such factors in the production process. A knowledge of the size and orientation of any major joint sets, for example, particularly in igneous rocks which have no natural bedding planes, is particularly relevant. Natural joints are produced by stress release as the rock is exposed at the earth surface, and tend to have discrete and predictable regional trends. They cause the rock to split naturally into relatively regularly sized blocks. Such joint patterns can have significant effects on the way in which a quarry operator develops the quarry face. In contrast, while jointing is also often a common feature of sedimentary rocks, their characteristically bedded nature also exerts control on the size of block which can be produced. The techniques used to initially extract stone blocks have tended to exploit such natural lines of weakness.

Changing techniques in the construction industry have lead to different needs for stone, principally since the 1930's the increasing use of thinly slabbed stone for cladding on prefabricated metal frameworks (Kempe 1983). Although these demands have necessitated the setting up of new standard tests to ensure the suitability of the many different stones now available to the expanding world market, quarrying production techniques still largely follow traditional techniques changing only in the scale of production.

3. Transportation of stone

The single aspect of the building stone industry which has changed most dramatically over the last millenium and particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries is the enormous improvements in our transportation networks. To the earliest stone producers, the movement of large blocks of stone must have proved to be a considerable problem, given the limited manpower available and lack of alternative power sources. Undeterred, however, by such apparent problems they still managed to construct Stonehenge in Wiltshire, by transporting igneous 'bluestones' (diorite) from west Wales by water and by moving the even larger, locally sarsen sandstone monoliths (up to 50 tonnes in weight), several tens of kilometres overland to the site. Early stone producers were well aware of the usefulness of navigable rivers and the sea for transporting stone.

The improvement of our national transportation networks over time was a fundamental process in the growth of Britain's building stone industry. Stone houses, ranging from small vernacular cottages to the palatial houses of the aristocracy were built despite what appears to us today to be a complete lack of an adequate road network or even suitable vehicles for transporting the stone. Most buildings were constructed using local stones from quarries close to the construction site, many worked only for the duration of the project, until at least the early part of the 18th century. The only quarries able to achieve anything like a national distribution were those fortunate enough to be sited on or near navigable river systems or with access to the sea e.g. Portland and Bath.

The first real expansion and true commercialization of the stone industry on a national basis came with the development of the canal system beginning in the late 18th century and subsequently gained pace with the growth of the main rail networks from the early 19th century onwards. The advantages to the stone industry of the growing canal network were quickly recognised by the rapidly expanding entrepreneurial class. Quarries which had previously supplied only the local area, for example at Bath, soon expanded to take advantage of the new transport system. The first national survey of Britain's dimension stone industry, carried out by the commissioners charged with locating suitable stone for the 'New' Houses of Parliament recognised 102 building stone quarries in 1839, the majority of which offered transportation of their stones to London by various canal routes (Barry et a11839; Lott & Richardson 1997).

By 1857 Robert Hunt of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, was able to produce a county by county statistical survey of Britain's quarrying industry. This survey listed 3000 quarries, a very large proportion of which were producing stone for building and most of whom now distributed their products via the newly established rail network.

The 19th century saw a period of expansion in the building stone industry which is unlikely ever to be achieved again. Stone remained the principal building material over much Britain until the development of mass production techniques in the brick industry in the latter decades of the century. Brick production now far outstrips that of natural stone. Further blows to the building stone industry came in 1960's when pre-cast concrete began to compete with brick as our principal building material.

Today, although Britain's building stone is distributed using an excellent integrated national rail and road network competition is growing with a foreign trade in stones from quarries as far away as China and Australia. The construction industry is now able to take delivery of stone directly from the quarry to the building site, wherever it may be. The stone may even arrive in neat pre-packed, shrink wrapped pallet loads.

4. The geology and distribution of Britain's building stone resources

When all of Britain's building stone quarries, both historic and current, are plotted on a map it is evident that to the north and west of a line from Scarborough to Exeter the bulk of the stones that have been quarried are sandstones while to the east of the line they are dominantly limestones (Figure ?). This pattern simply reflects the underlying geology with most of our most important building sandstones quarried from the older Palaeozoic and Triassic successions, which generally outcrop in the west, while the younger Mesozoic (Jurassic and Cretaceous) rocks, which outcrop to the east of the line, providing our best building limestones.

Limestones, however, also form a considerable part of the Palaeozoic succession, notably occurring in the Devonian and Lower Carboniferous belt, though used locally for building, they are more valuable today as sources for lime and aggregate. One exception to this general distribution picture is the narrow outcrop of Permian dolomitic limestone (Permian, ‘Magnesian Limestone’) running northwards from Nottingham to Teeside which has also been used extensively for building stone in the past and is still currently quarried at a number of localities in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire.

5. Britain's building stone resources - Sedimentary stones

Sandstones: Sandstone is now the most common building stone used in construction in Britain. Historically sandstones have been quarried for building purposes in almost every area of Britain where they occur at outcrop and they are available from almost every part of the geological column. In general, they are the most durable of our sedimentary building stones, however, they have not all proved to be equally resistant to the effects of modem pollution. Today the number of varieties of sandstone quarried has markedly declined since their heyday from the mid 19th to early 20th centuries. Several areas of Britain which in the past produced considerable volumes of building sandstone, particularly around the developing industrial areas of South Wales-Bristol, the Midlands, the North of England and the Midland Valley of Scotland, now have a much reduced or negligible building sandstone production. The decline in the commercial production of building stones from the red and white Triassic sandstones is particularly marked.

Limestones:  Limestones have been extensively used in the past for building purposes. Many of Britain's most famous buildings are built of limestones of various types e.g.; the Houses of Parliament (Anston Stone) most of our great cathedrals - St. Pauls (Portland Stone), Llandaff (Dundry and Lias stones), Wells (Doulting Stone), York Minster (Magnesian Limestone from Tadcaster and Huddleston quarries) etc. The softer nature of limestone was particularly important where elaborate decorative carving of the stone was required. As with the sandstone industry in earlier times, most limestone outcrops were worked, if only locally, for building purposes. In a few areas the production of limestone for building stone developed into a major industry and their products were exported throughout Britain and in some cases abroad e.g Bath and Portland stones. Occupying an important niche in some areas, was the quarrying of relatively soft Chalk (e.g Totternhoe and Clunch) lithologies, for elaborately carved decorative work as in the cathedrals of Ely and Exeter.

Flints, ironstones, septaria and tufa: In the absence of suitable sandstones and limestones, other sedimentary lithologies were often pressed into local use. Over much of the Upper Cretaceous Chalk outcrop siliceous flints were commonly quarried or mined for decorative facing stones or rubblestone walling. The ironstone units of the Lower and Middle Jurassic, which commonly have variegated rich yellow-brown hues, were widely used in the past for local buildings. Other unusual building stones include the large calcareous septarian nodules and tufa (see below).

Igneous stones 'granites': Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries Britain was the worlds leading granite producer. The industry was centred, principally in two areas, the north-east of Scotland, notably around Aberdeen and Peterhead, but also at many smaller granitic outcrops (Anderson 1939), and in south-west England around the large but separate igneous intrusive centres in Devon and Cornwall (Harris 1888). Smaller production centres developed at Shap, Cumbria and at Mountsorrel (granodiorite) in Leicestershire. In more recent times there has been a major contraction of our granite industry. Surviving production is still concentrated in these traditional areas but the number of quarries has been significantly reduced. This is despite the fact that in our new buildings ’granite’ still commonly used in considerable amounts for cladding, however, most of it now comes from overseas sources.

The 'granite city' of Aberdeen provides a good example of the early importance of the building stone industry to the local economy and in creating the character of an area. The most famous of the Aberdeen granites is the coarsely crystalline silver-grey variety from the Rubislaw Quarries. Most of the notable buildings in the city are built of this stone and considerable quantities were exported overseas. The old quarries operated from at least the 17th century and lie within the present city limits, they ceased operation in 1971 having supplied stone continuously for almost 400yrs (Donnelly 1974).Its success was based not only on the quality of the stone but also on its location near the rapidly developing city and, for export purposes, its proximity to the port for transportation. Also near Aberdeen are the Kemnay, Sclattie and pink Corrennie quarries. The quarry owners were able to improve production with new technological innovations. At Kenmay the first steam cranes and later the Blondin system (an overhead cable lift for raising stone from the deep quarry flood were developed. Improvements were also made in the ancillary industries where improved polishing and cutting technologies were developed. Important granite quarries also operated around Peterhead (reddish-brown) and Cairngall (grey) both with an extensive export trade to London and other British cities.

Elsewhere in Scotland other granite quarries include the deep red Ross of Mull, perhaps best be seen outside Scotland in the ostentatious Albert Memorial in London (Robinson 1987), and grey Criffel/Dalbeattie granite from Kircubright. Output from the Scottish quarries increased from about 12,000 tons in 1797 to 260,000 tons by 1939 (Anderson 1961). 

Granite was produced from several quarries in each of the five separate granite bosses that intrude the Devon and Cornwall peninsular. Production, in its heyday in the 19th century, was centred on the Dartmoor (Hay tor), Bodmin (Cheesewring and De Lank), St Austell (Luxullian), Penryn (Camsew & Penryn) and Penzance areas. In general they can be distinguished from those varieties quarried in Scotland by their coarse often porphyritic nature and the common flow orientation of the feldspars. Though both grey and pink feldspar varieties occur the former tend to dominate. Proximity to the rivers or coast for shipment were again a contributing factor to the national success of the industry in this area.

In most of the rock formations of Britain if the stone was hard enough it was invariably used for local building purposes in the past. Many finer grained, intrusive igneous rocks were used in this way such as the dolerite of the Whin Sill in Northumberland. This hard, fine-grained dark coloured rock or whinstone was used in local village houses (e.g. Craster) but because of its intractable nature was more widely exploited as an aggregate. In Exeter and south Devon the local vesicular basalts known as trap were widely used in its ancient buildings including parts of the original fabric of the cathedral.

Included by geologists in the igneous rock classification are the serpentinites. These colourful ultrabasic igneous rocks are commonly used for the decorative cladding of shop fronts. Most serpentinites are, however, now imported. Two areas of Britain were known for their production of serpentine, the Lizard area of Cornwall and the Isle of Anglesey in Wales. In Anglesey the serpentine was known as the Mona Marble.

Metamorphic rocks Slate: Slate is defined by geologists as a fine grained rock which has a pronounced cleavage Slates were produced by the metamorphism of pre-existing fine grained rocks, principally mudstones and/or fine grained tuffaceous (volcaniclastic sediments) in Britain. The slatey cleavage, which allows the rock to be split into thin sheets along with its impervious nature are, to the stone industry its most important characteristics. The cleavage is developed by the reorientation and reprecipitation of micaceous and platy mineral grains during the high temperatures and pressures inherent in the metamorphic process and is usually but not always unrelated to original depositional bedding planes.

This definition of slate excludes the stone products known as 'stone' slates which are naturally fissile limestones and sandstones, widely used for roofing purposes, but which are not metamorphosed in any way.

Like the granite industry, Britain's slate industry, which dominated world production in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, has suffered not only from foreign competition but also from an increasing tendency to replace natural slate roofing with man-made clay and concrete tiles.

Britain's slate production is still concentrated in its the traditional areas of North Wales, the Lake District and Devon and Cornwall. However, the industry once also thrived in Scotland (Easdale (Tucker 1976), Ballachullish (Fairweather 1974), Foudland (Richey & Anderson 1945?), West Wales (Ri chards 1997) and Leicestershire (Swithland) but has now virtually died out in these areas. This decline cannot be attributed in any way to the quality of the slates produced or to a lack of reserves but probably to economics, and the decline in skilled slaters able to lay slates efficiently in the traditional way. There is also an apparent indifference which architects and planners now seem to have over specifying British slates for new build projects, rarely do you see natural slates used in modern housing developments despite their proven durability.

Marble:  To the geologist a true marble is a metamorphosed limestone i.e a completely recrystallized sedimentary limestone. In Britain, by this definition, there are few true marbles which have been exploited for building or decorative stone. To the stone industry, however, the term marble can include any sedimentary limestone hard enough to be cut and polished.

Britain's 'marble' industry was based largely on the exploitation of limestones which, because of their hardness and fossiliferous structure, could be cut and polished to produce an attractive 'marble-like' finish. True metamorphosed marbles, with few exceptions, if needed had to be imported from Europe and elsewhere and marble imports into Britain for decorative purposes date back as far as Roman times.

Probably the best example of the industry usage of the term marble (polished limestone) in Britain is the well known Purbeck Marble of Dorset. These hard, thin, fossiliferous freshwater limestone beds have been exploited as a decorative stone since Roman times. The Purbeck Marble is not a metamorphosed limestone as is evident from the preservation, without deformation or alteration of the thousands of small freshwater gastropod shells that make up much of the rock. The Sussex Marble, from the Lower Cretaceous of the Weald, is similar in character to the Purbeck and often mistaken for it by the untutored eye. Other sedimentary 'marbles' which achieved at least local fame include many limestones from the Carboniferous rocks of Britain, such as Frosterley (a black limestone rich in white coral fragments), Nidderdale, Dent and Egglestone (black crinoidal limestones) and several colourful limestones from Derbyshire (Ashford Black, Bird's Eye, Duke's Red etc). The so-called Draycott Marble from Somerset is a polished coarse grained breccia composed of numerous reworked fragments of Carboniferous limestone.

The only true metamorphosed limestone marbles quarried in Britain were worked in western Scotland in Tiree, Skye etc, some achieved short-lived commercial success such as the serpentinous green and white streaked variety from the Isle of Iona quarried from the Pre-Cambrian outcrops (Dimes 1990; Viner 1992). A recent revival is the variegated serpentinous marble from the Ledmore Quarries in Sutherland.

6. A geological survey of Britain's building stone resources

Pre-Cambrian (>540 million years)
Britain's oldest geological strata are Pre-Cambrian in age and outcrop in only a few limited areas of Britain. The most extensive outcrops occurring in Scotland, Anglesey, Church Stretton and Charnwood. Though commonly used in local vernacular buildings there has been only limited commercial production of building stone from these rock units. In general the outcrops in Scotland are too remote from their potential markets to have been widely exploited. However, the thick blue-grey slate with their characteristic coarse pyrite concretions, known as the Ballachullish Slate, quarried on the shores of Loch Leven, from the Dalradian (Ballachullish Slate Formation) and used throughout Scotland in the 19th and early 20th centuries, were a significant exception (Fairweather 1974). Other slate beds in the Dalradian were worked nearby at Easdale, and further afield at outcrops along the Highland Boundary Fault, the Aberfoyle slate belt and also in the Aberdeen-Banff successions (Richey & Anderson 1944; Tucker 1976; Brumhead 19??). All these Scottish slate producers suffered badly from the competition of the Welsh producers and were eventually forced to close.

Of the Pre-Cambrian outcrops in England the Swithland Slates were quarried from steeply dipping inliers of Charnian age rocks, from a unit now known as the Swithland Greywacke Formation. The rocks are true slates, having a metamorphically induced but quite coarse cleavage. They are hard, very fine grained, greywacke sandstones and siltstones which split along the cleavage relatively easily, though often irregularly, into thin slabs. The Swithland Slates are characteristically purple to green-grey in colour. They are best seen today in the roofs of the older houses in the villages of Leicestershire surrounding the quarry sites. Larger slate slabs from both the Ballachullish and Swithland quarries were also elaborately carved by local craftsmen for headstones and are commonly found in local village graveyards in both quarrying areas.

Lower Palaeozoic (540-417 m.y)
Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian Lower Palaeozoic rocks outcrop extensively in the west of Britain in Wales, Cumbria and the Southern Uplands areas. These rocks units have supplied sandstones, slates and limestones for local vernacular housing for centuries such as the Horton Flagstones from Ribblesdale in Yorkshire and the numerous Shropshire quarries supplying various stones to Shrewsbury (Mitchell1985; Scard 1990).

However, the greatest contribution of the Lower Palaeozoic succession to the stone industry of Britain has been in the production of roofing slates. The slate quarries of North Wales have supplied a substantial portion of their purple and blue-grey roofing slate to much of the country. From relatively small local beginnings they were able, first by the development of the narrow-gauge railway systems into the heart of the quarrying areas and later with the expansion of the national rail network to eclipse most of the other roofing slate quarry production in the rest of Britain. The famous quarries at Penrhyn and Llanberis produced purple slates from Cambrian rocks; those at Blaenau Ffestiniog grey slates from the Ordovician succession and those at Corwen, grey and green slates from the Silurian rocks. A significant slate industry also developed in Dyfed in Wales during the 19th century (Tucker & Tucker 1979; Lott & Barclay 2002).

Elsewhere in Britain slates have been produced commercially from the Ordovician rocks at the Burlington, Tilberthwaite and Honiston quarries in Cumbria (Geddes 1975). These slate quarries were widely renowned long before the boom in Welsh slate production. The heavier 'Westmoreland' green slates were widely used on prestigious buildings throughout the country before being displaced by the thinner and lighter Welsh slates. Several slate quarries are still operational in the area.

Of the Cambrian outcrops in England the Swithland Slates were quarried from steeply dipping inliers of Chamian age rocks, from a unit now known as the Swithland Greywacke Formation. The rocks are true slates, having a metamorphically induced cleavage. They are hard, very fine grained, greywacke sandstones and siltstones which split along the cleavage relatively easily, though often irregularly, into thin slabs. The Swithland Slates are characteristically purple to green-grey in colour. They are best seen today in the roofs of the older houses in the villages of Leicestershire surrounding the quarry sites. Larger slate slabs from both the Ballachullish and Swithland quarries were also elaborately carved by local craftsmen for headstones and are commonly found in local village graveyards nearby both quarrying areas.

Upper Palaeozoic (417-248 m.y.) - Devonian, Carboniferous and Permian systems: Devonian building stones

The Devonian system includes those rock units commonly known as the Old Red Sandstone. They outcrop extensively in Devon, the Welsh Borders, the Midland Valley and the north east of Scotland and have been quarried for building stone at many localities within each of these areas, in some cases for many centuries, and were widely used in vernacular housing. Some of the stones have a well deserved reputation for durability and are used throughout Britain and were in the past exported widely overseas.

In South West England the rocks of the Devonian system are best known for two important products. The best known is the silver grey-green to brown roofing slates of the Delabole Quarry. The quarry has been in operation for over 500 years and continues to thrive today. There are many Devonshire villages either roofed with these slates or whose walls are clad in large slates (‘slate-hung’) to provide additional protection for the softer, less durable, local building stones.  The Devonian succession has also been an important source of decorative, polished, limestone slabs or marbles' for many decades. Few quarries are, however, operating today. The best known varieties included the pink-veined Ashburton 'Marble', Red Ipplepen, Petitor, Plymouth Black and Red & Grey Ogwell limestones etc (Watson 1916). The hard, variegated - red-orange-yellow-brown and white - limestones from this area, often with complex fabrics and containing spectacular ‘coral’ fossils were used, when highly polished, as decorative 'marble' cladding or for fireplaces. 

In Herefordshire and Gwent the local dull red to purple, Devonian sandstones continue to be widely used for new building and conservation work. One quarry in particular has a very long history, the 'Red' Wilderness Quarry, which producess a hard red sandstone most recently seen in a new office block in Central London at the Poultry. The Wilderness Quarry like several other famous stone quarries in Britain received considerable attention from the geological community in Victorian times when spectacular fossils were discovered during the quarrying operations. Elsewhere numerous small quarries have worked the sandstones for local building in past centuries and in Hereford, Ross on Wye and Monmouth the stone is widely displayed (Hunt 1858). Probably its most famous usage is for the ornately carved Norman doorway at Kilpeck Church. Locally pale greenish-white sandstone varieties also occurred and were widely used in local buildings as at Withington.

In Scotland the Devonian succession has yielded abundant sandstone for building particularly in the Dundee area. In the 19th century numerous quarries were known to have worked the reddish sandstones (Mackie 1980). Good access from these quarries to the coastal ports lead to a flourishing market in England, Europe and even North America and Australia for much of the late 18th and 19th centuries. The most successful quarries were probably those at Carmyllie with its fine, bluish-green, sandstone being shipped extensively overseas, notably for paving in Cologne Cathedral (Mackie op. cit.).

Further north the thinly bedded Devonian sandstone successions in the well known quarries around Thurso in Caithness have provided paving stone for centuries to many towns and cities in Britain, Europe and America. Omand & Porter (1981) list 43 towns and cities in England alone, which the quarries had supplied with flagstones by 1877. They also show exports from the quarries to Australia, India, New Zealand and even South America. The dark grey to black, fine grained sandstones have been used to constructing vernacuiar buildings for centuries, commercially, however, the flagstone industry developed extensively in the 19th century and has, after a period in the doldrums this century, has now become a flourishing industry once again.

7. Carboniferous building stone resources of the Lower Carboniferous, limestones and sandstones (Dinantian)

The generally hard and intractable nature of the Carboniferous limestones of Britain has meant that with few exceptions (e,g Birmingham Town Hall) they were only ever used for local building purposes. Stone block to provide a rough ashlar was widely quarried along all the limestone outcrops and good examples of its use can be seen in parts of South and North Wales, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Cumbria, Northumberland and in the Midland Valley of Scotland. In some areas the typically grey limestone is replaced by reddened dolomitized varieties which have also proved locally popular for building, in for example parts of South Wales (Whitchurch) and north Leicestershire (Breedon). In general, however, the principal product from the Carboniferous limestones is lime for cement and chemical industries and as crushed rock aggregates. In a few areas the limestones were exploited for ornamental purposes. Particularly successful in this respect were the Hopton Wood quarries in Derbyshire which have supplied polished stones for paving, fireplace surrounds and more soberly perhaps as tens of thousands of crosses and monuments to commemorate the dead of two World Wars. Elsewhere in Derbyshire a number of different fossiliferous beds have been used in the past to provide decorative inserts for fireplaces and ornaments in many of the large houses and churches in the region. The best known include the crinoid-rich Derby Fossil stones and the Ashford Black Marble quarried from the organic-rich Bee Low Limestone (Ford 19??). In North Yorkshire other limestone beds have been similarly exploited for their decorative properties e.g. the black, coral-rich Frosterley and Dent marbles and the Egglestone Marble. A few quarries continue to sporadically produce polished fossiliferous limestones slabs for decorative use in these areas today.

In the Lower Carboniferous of Britain there is a marked change in lithology from the limestone-dominated successions of Yorkshire and the south of Britain to a northern succession in which sandstones become much more prevalent in the sequences. In Northumberland and the Midland Valley of Scotland sandstones have long been extensively quarried for building stone. In Northumberland the best known sandstones came from the Blaxter, Doddington, Darney and Prudham quarries. These quarries have provided durable sandstone for houses in many of the towns and cities in the north east (Newcastle, Sunderland etc) and some are still widely exported to the rest of Britain (e.g. Crane 1979; Bunyan et al 1987).

Lower Carboniferous sandstones also provided much of the building stone for the towns and cities of the Edinburgh area particularly during the 19th century, Some of the quarries have a much longer history. The best known include the Craigleith, Hailes, Humbie, Ravelston and Binnie sandstones. The city of Edinburgh has a fine display of buildings constructed from these local sandstones (Bunyan et al 1987; McMillan et al 1999). Despite their previous importance few of these quarries remain in operation today.

Millstone Grit Group (Namurian)

The sandstones of the Millstone Grit Group provide some of the best and most durable building stones in the UK. They outcrop most extensively in Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Northumberland and are known to have been quarried, at least locally for centuries (Moorhouse 1990). During the late 18th and 19th centuries, however, particularly with the coming of the railways, quarrying activity reached a frenzied peak as new towns and cities expanded across Victorian England. Most cities or towns in the Midlands and North have most of their houses and some at least of their major civic buildings built from sandstones of the Namurian Millstone Grit (e.g. Leeds (Dimes and Mitchell 2006).

In the Peak District of Derbyshire, the exploitation of the Namurian sandstones also has a long history. All the major sandstone beds have been locally quarried for building stone particulariy where most accessible along the Derwent valley (Farey 1815; Stevenson et al. 1971; Smith et al 1967).

In the High Peak area sandstones from the Shale Grit (at Kinder Bank), Kinderscout Grit (at Chinley Moor, Lady Bower, Stokehall) the Heyden Rock (at Thornseat), Ashover Grit (at Combs, Ridge Hall and Longhill), Chatsworth Grit (at Birch Vale, Buxworth) and the Rough Rock (at Cracken Edge) have all been extensively worked in the past.

The most important area of commercial sandstone quarrying in Derbyshire lies further to the south and east along the Derwent and Amber valleys and the hillsides between. Here, the Namurian sandstones are exposed along the valley sides from Hathersage to Belper. Quarries have long worked the Kinderscout Grit (at Hayfield, and Whatstandwell quarries), Ashover Grit (at the Darley Dale, Birchover, Pilough, Duke's and Stanton quarries), Chatsworth Grit (Yarnc1iff, Grindleford, Beeley Moor, Bole Hill, Lumshill and Millstone Edge quarries) and Rough Rock (Coxbench quarries). The Stanc1iffe Darley Dale Stone is particularly famous for its duarability and quality and has been widely used in local towns and cities (e.g. Derby Cathedral; The Guildhall, Nottingham; St. George's Hall, Liverpool; Royal Exchange Manchester). The Ashover Grit used in the buildings in the village of Kirk Ireton is stained pink by percolation of groundwaters through the former Triassic red-bed cover (Frost & Smart 1979). The Shale Grit (Bolehill Stone) was used for the Kinder reservoirs and Stoke Hall Stone (Ashover Grit from Grindleford) for the Howden and Derwent reservoirs and Sheffield Town Hall. The Rough Rock from the Coxbench quarries was used extensively for buildings in Derby (Gibson et al. 1908, 1913).

In Lancashire most of the major Namurian sandstone beds were quarried locally for building stone. These durable stones were much in demand for local housing (e.g. Kinderscout Grit in Hadfield and Mossley), factories, mills and engineering projects such as railway bridges, viaducts and reservoirs. e.g. the Pendle Grit used in the Ogden Reservoir, Warley Wise Grit for the Sabden Reservoir, Kinderscout Grit for the Walshaw Dean and Longdendale reservoirs. Fletcher Bank Grit was used for the construction and restoration of Manchester Cathedral (Earp et al. 1961). Extensive quarrying industries developed in several areas notably along the Tame Valley and in Longdendale (Bromehead et al 1933).

The sandstone of the Pendle Grit Formation was extensively quarried for building stone near Longridge in the mid to late 19th Century. The town hall at Preston is built of Longridge Stone.Lancaster is a fine stone city built largely from local quarries in the Pendle Grit. The Haslingden Flags were quarried in several areas around Chorley and, most extensively, along the Rossendale Valley from Whitworth through Haslingden itself to Pickup Bank. Many of the local towns and villages were built and roofed using block stone and flagstone from these quarries.

In Yorkshire most Namurian sandstones have also been worked locally for building stone, under a plethora of local names, for centuries past e.g. the 12th century abbeys of Kirkstall (Bramley Fall Stone) and Bolton (Stephens et al. 1953). The main sandstone beds, the Guiseley, Kinderscout and Pule Hill grits and Rough Rock have all been extensively quarried. The Kinderscout Grit, for example, was quarried in the past around Todmorden and Hebden Bridge for local buildings (e.g. Heptonstall Church), at Howarth, Addingham Edge, Caley Crags and Pool, near Otley. Stone from the latter was widely used in the Leeds area (St Ann's Roman Catholic Cathedral, Leeds) and was also exported. The Pule Hill Grit (Clock Face Quarry) is still quarried today in the Huddersfield area. Local quarries in the Chatsworth Grit supplied stone for many of Sheffield's buildings Of the many sandstone beds, however, the most widely exploited are probably those of the Rough Rock. The Rough Rock (Crosland Hill Stone) provided much of the building stone for the towns of Halifax and Huddersfield and other local villages. It was also quarried extensively near Pateley Bridge in the Scotgate Ash Quarries. The latter are known to have been active since at least medieval times but saw a massive expansion in operations with the coming of the railways from 1862 until the 1920's and supplied stone for many important city buildings and even for export (Blacker 1995). The Bramley Fall Stone which was quarried at Horsforth in Leeds from the Rough Rock aquired an enviable reputation for strength and durability and was widely used in bridge and dockyard construction in London and elsewhere. At Pontefract the 13th Century castle is built of local Carboniferous sandstone, termed the Pontefract Rock, which is still quarried today.

In Yorkshire the Bradley Flags, Rough Rock Flags (at Ferniehurst and Baildon) and Scotland Flags (Midgley, near Halifax) have provided building stones and flagstones for paving and roofing which have been used since at least the early 18th century (Walton 1940) which today are still quarried and exported throughout the country.

Coal Measure Sandstones (Westphalian)

The sandstone beds commonly associated with the coalfield successions have been extensively exploited in some areas. In South Wales, Gloucestershire and North Somerset the blue-grey Pennant Sandstones have been extensively quarried. The outcrops along the steep South Wales valley sides are still pockmarked with numerous small quarries clustered around each valley community. Few of the quarries achieved wider recognition, in general the sandstone supply is so plentiful that local quarries were opened for each building project and abandoned at the end. An exception is the Craig yr Hesg quarry at Pontypridd which has provided its hard, massive, blue-grey sandstones for construction and engineering projects for almost a century (Coulson 2005). Though little if any evidence now remains some of the sandstones were also exploited as tilestones for roofing purposes.

In the Forest of Dean and across the Severn Estuary in the Bristol area the Pennant Sandstones have also been extensively exploited. Stone quarries have operated in the Forest of Dean since Norman times. Much of the stone from these quarries has been used to suply the suburban housing developments in Bristol.

In Derbyshire the sandstones of the Coal Measures have been used locally for building since Roman times (e.g. Roman site at Ockbrooke). Numerous small quarries are known but no major exploitation of the sandstones has taken place with the exception perhaps of the Crawshaw Sandstone (Woodhead Hill Rock) and Wingfield Flags. In the High Peak area the W oodhead Hill Rock and the Milnrow Sandstone have been worked around Whaley Bridge. Further to the south and east the Crawshaw Sandstone was extensively quarried in the Holymoorside, Alton and W oolley areas.

Formerly large quarries exploited the Wingfield Flags for building stone, paving and roofing slates at Freebirch to the west of Chesterfield. The flags were also worked at Bole Hill Quarry. The 15th century manor house at South Wing field was constructed of sandstone from the Wingfield Flags quarried from the Crich Moor area. Some quarries, like the one operating within the estate lands of Hardwick Hall for example, were opened solely to supply stone for building the original halls and have been operated regularly ever since for conservation work.

The sandstones of the Coal Measures in Lancashire, Greater Manchester and to a much lesser extent in eastern Cheshire have also been extensively exploited in the past throughout their outcrop area. The fissile sandstones of the Dyneley Knowle (at Appley Bridge, Billinge and Stalybridge) and Upholland flags, from the Lower Coal Measures provided paving and roofing slates for local use e.g. in St. Helen's,Wigan, Bolton, Darwen, Accrington, Bumley etc. (Aldridge 1900; Wright et al 1927; Jones et al. 1938).

The more massive beds of these lower Coal Measure sandstone units have also been locally worked for building stone e.g. Crutchman (Milnrow) Sandstone and Old Lawrence Rock.

The Middle Coal Measure sandstones from the Cannel, Trencherbone and Peel Hall rocks were locally exploited for building stone at Haigh, near Wigan and Famworth near Bolton e.g. (Jones 1938).

In Yorkshire the sandstones of the Coal Measures (including the Gaisby, Grenoside and Thornhill rocks) are still extensively quarried. The Coal Measure sandstone from the Gaisby Rock, more commonly known as the Bolton Woods Stone, has also long been exploited for dimension stone. The town hall at Manchester (Spinkwell Stone) is  among many major Victorian buildings to be built of this stone (Dimes 1990). The Thornhill Rock was also once very extensively quarried around Wakefield and Morley and is still quarried today in the area.

Perhaps the most famous and successful of these Coal Measure sandstone quarrying industries in Yorkshire, however, were those at Elland near Halifax. The Elland Flagstones have been quarried since the 12th century, but their heyday was during the late 19th century. By 1900 there were at least 40 flagstone quarries in operation in the area around Northowram, Southowram, Hipperholme and Brighouse. These quarries provide building stone, stone roofing slates and paving for the cities of Leeds and Bradford and many other local towns and villages and also exported their products much further afield. After the 1st World War the industry went into rapid decline and is now continued by only a few operators in the area (Wray 1930; Godwin 1984).

In Northumberland most of the sandstones quarried come from the Lower Carboniferous successions, however, a number of quarries have produced building stone from the Coal Measure sandstones outcropping along the sides of the Tyne Valley.

8. Triassic building sandstone resources

Triassic sandstones have been worked for building stones across much of their outcrop, which extends from the Devonshire coast, through Somerset and the Midlands (Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire) across into Nottinghamshire and on into Northumberland, Cumbria and south-west Scotland. In each of these areas very significant sandstone production took place in the 19th and early 20th centuries. However, present day production has contracted so that building stones are now produced at only a few quarries in these areas.

The Triassic succession is best known for its production of red sandstones but, significant local production of other lithologies, particularly coarse breccias and conglomerates and non-red or white sandstones were also quarried in some areas in the past. The major sandstone production came from the unit now termed the Sherwood Sandstone Group (formerly the Bunter and Keuper sandstones). In the south west of England these sandstones are generally of poor quality and were only worked for local buildings.

Production was centred on the outcrops of the lower Exe Valley (Dimes 1990). Locally the Heavitree Stone a breccia, consisting of coarse, reworked fragments of the surrounding rocks are particularly distinctive and was widely used in the Exeter area.

Further to the north in Somerset dolomitic conglomerates representing a marginal facies of the Triassic were commonly used for building stone in the Chew Valley area (West Harptree) and at Draycott where it was known as the Draycott Marble. The local red and grey sandstones also commonly appear in the village houses over much of the the outcrop (Chew Magna and Chew Stoke). No quarries are working the Triassic sandstones or breccias of the area at present.

In South Wales the red Radyr Stone is a breccia of similar origin used widely for decorative work in the Cardiff area (Llandaff Cathedral, Cardiff Docks and in the bridges of the Taff Vale Railway). Other sandstones quarried from the Triassic successions of this area include the yellow Sudbrooke Stone, a sandy limestone used by the Romans at Caerwent Fort and Caldicot Castle, and the very fine grained Quarrella (Rhaetian) and Sutton stones from the Bridgend area.

Across the whole of the Midlands area of England the Triassic sandstones were at one time heavily exploited for local building. In Worcestershire the best known quarries were those at Ombersley and Hadley and in Staffordshire there is evidence of numerous sandstone quarries in the sandstone outcrops but few appear to have achieved more than local importance e.g Colwich, Colton Mill Crumpwood and Fulford (Hull 1869). The only surviving Staffordshire quarries are those at Hollington which have been worked for centuries, the pale red Hollington Stone graces many historic buildings in the local area and further afield as in Coventry Cathedral. In Shropshire the white Grinshill Stone is best seen in buildings in Shrewsbury and surrounding villages. Other quarries operated at Weston and Grog Hill. IN Nottinghamshire sandstones of the Sherwood Sandstone Group were formerley quarried alommng the Trent at Weston Cliff, Pistem Hill, Castle Donnington In Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire thin sandstone developments, known locally as skerries, occur in the Mercia Mudstone Group and have been widely used in the past for local buildings (lott .

A number of Triassic red sandstones were quarried for building stone in the Cheshire area particularly from 1850's onwards. The main building sandstones outcrop in shallow and high ridges around the margins of the Cheshire Plain. The building stone industry was based around the quarries at Runcorn, Rainhill, Storeton and Woolton etc, many now buried beneath the suburban sprawl of Liverpool. These red sandstones were extensively used for local buildings and production was significant enough to generate an brief export trade to America.

In the Stockport and Knutsford areas the red sandstones of the Sherwood Sandst=one Group) were quarried at Lymm, Timperley, Quarrybank, Styal and near Alderley Edge. They were also quarried for building stone at Helsby, Manley, Simmond's Hill, Delamere, Kelsall and Peckforton.

Substantial quarrying of red Triassic sandstones has continued in Cumbria in the St. Bees area and the Eden Valley. The red St Bees sandstones have been quarried since earliest times but commercial production increased in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the stone was exported to America. In the Vale of Eden the red sandstones of the Lazonby quarries have long been important and are still in production.

In south west Scotland Triassic sandstones have proved to be a particularly valuable building stone resource (Clashach, Corsehill, Locharbriggs, Corncockle, Gatelawbridge, Spynie & Cove).

Other uses

Sandstones were used in the past not only for building purposes but to support a plethora of other local stone industries. Most notably sandstones from the Millstone Grit of Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire and Northumberland were long used to provide millstones for flour mills throughout Britain and also supplied to a large overseas market in Europe and America. Smaller grindstones were produced to support the great cutlery industry of Sheffield for many decades of the 19th and early 20th century. At Wickersley near Sheffield in 1856, there were for example 30 quarries providing grindstones to the Sheffield trade. A further large volume of which were also being exported to America (Hunt 1856). Scythe or sharpening stones were carried by almost every working man to maintain an edge on his tools as he toiled at the harvest in the fields. On a lesser but less important scale massive pulpstones were produced for use in the paper and cloth industries. Other sandstones were used to fashion cider and cheese presses or to grind chemicals for the paint industry. All these products have long since been replaced as technology has improved but in the not too distant past they provided work and an income for a considerable number of people.

In the Glasgow and Edinburgh areas of Scotland a similar picture emerges. Extensive quarrying took place near and within the present city boundaries. Much of Victorian Glasgow is built of local Triassic red sandstone while the city of Edinburgh is built largely of grey-brown Carboniferous sandstones.

9. Today's building sandstone production

The general decline in building sandstone production are probably typified by areas like South Wales and Liverpool. In South Wales good quality sandstone was produced from innumerable small quarries in the sides of the valleys. This Pennant Sandstone from the Coal Measures was used to build the thousands of regimented terraced houses needed to provide homes for the rapidly expanding coal mining industry. Typical of the area are row upon row of blue-grey stone houses with contrasting red or yellow brick coins and door and window mouldings. Each terrace was roofed in blue-grey or purple slates from the quarries of North Wales. Local churches used the same Pennant stone for walling, but to achieve greater decorative effect they commonly used yellow oolitic and shelly limestones from the Middle Jurassic of the Bath area for window and door mouldings. In contrast in Liverpool the terraced housing developments were mainly of red brick, made using mudstones from the local Coal Measure succession and they were until relatively recent times still commonly roofed with North Wales slates.

Dimension stone production is today still principally concentrated in the Carboniferous sandstone areas of Northumberland (Black Pasture, Bearl, Blaxter, Doddington), County Durham (Stainton), Tyne & Wear (Springwell), Yorkshire (Bolton Woods, Bramley Fall, Clock Face, Crosland Hill, Greenmoor Rock, Ringby, Woodkirk), Lancashire (Fletcher Bank, Revidge, Waddington Fell, Whitworth), Derbyshire (Birchover, Stanton Moor, Peak Moor, Wattscliffe and Dukes working the Ashover Grit and Stoke Hall working the Kinderscout Grit), South Wales (Blue Pennant, Hafod), the Forest of Dean area (Minetrain, Barnhill, Bixhead) and in Scotland (Binney, Florida).

Permian dolomitic building limestone resources: The Lower magnesian limestone unit of the Cadeby Formation of Late Permian age forms an almost continuous outcrop from north Nottinghamshire to the Northumberland coast at Teeside (Smith 197?). Along much of its length, the outcrop is pock marked by quarries, many now disused but a few of the larger ones still operating successfully.

The limestone has a mean composition of 54.35% CaC03 and 45.65% Mg C03 (Buist & Ineson 1992), making it a magnesium-rich or dolomitic limestone and has long been quarried for building stone. Some of our most famous historic buildings have been built of this stone. The best known are the cathedral churches of York, Beverley and Southwell, the castle at Conisborough; the abbeys of Thornton, Welbeck, and Roche and the Houses of Parliament in London. In addition the stone has been used in the churches and vernacular housing in many towns and villages of the midlands and north (e.g. Linby, Mansfield, Tadcaster, Wetherby, Thorpe Arch,) and large houses (e.g. Huddleston Hall, Bolsover Castle, Studeley Park) sited along the outcrop.

Despite its general uniformity in composition along the length of its outcrop the limestone does show subtle variations in colour and litho logical character. At the southern end of the outrop for example the limestone has a significant component of siliceous sand grains (up to 45%). This sandy facies of the limestone is best developed around the Mansfield area where it has been worked for many centuri~s as a the Mansfield White Stone. The presence of the fine sand grains in the limestone has helped to produced a particularly durable stone which was used extensively in Southwell Minster.

The limestone can vary in colour from white to cream to yellow brown, largely depending on the proportion of iron present. In the southern part of the outcrop the Red Mansfield Stone, a dolomitic sandstone, was extensively quarried and much sought after for decorative building work. The Red Mansfield is now no longer available and conservation works depends on the substitution of other red sandstones none of which can be classed as dolomitic. The Mansfield White Stone also has fine greenish clay seams which provide a further subtle colour variation to the stone.

In texture the magnesian limestone ranges from rather fine grained lithologies (e.g. Mansfield & Bolsover stones) to hard recrystallized forms with a distinctly coarsely  sucrosic texture (e.g. Linby Stone, Bulwell & Steetley stones). In some varieties the original the oolitic, bioclastic or coarsely peloidallimestone fabric is still preserved (e.g. Cadeby, Anston, Roche Abbey and Tadcaster stones).

Triassic building stone resources
The Triassic contains no limestone building stone resources.

10. Lower Jurassic building stone resources

Although no longer a primary source of building stone, the Lower Jurassic or Lias limestones were widely used for local buildings in the past. The blocky grey limestones, particularly well developed in the basal part of the succession (Blue Lias), are commonly seen in the walls of older houses along the whole of the outcrop from the Dorset coast to Yorkshire. Good examples can still be seen in buildings at, for example Lyme Regis, Street, Bristol, Cardiff and Newar., Today only a few quarries in Somerset are still able to supply this stone for building purposes.

Higher in the Lower Jurassic succession occur the Middle Lias ironstones (Fig.??). Best developed in Oxfordshire (Hornton Stone), Northampton and Lincolnshire (Marlstone Rock Formation). All were commonly used in the past for local buildings and occasionally exported further afield. To a lesser extent the Lower Lias Frodingham Ironstone was also used for building north of Scunthorpe. Only the Oxfordshire quarries are still operating and new sources of the stone are urgently needed if conservation of the large, and rapidly decaying building stock, in the other areas is to be supported.

Within the Upper Lias only the orange-brown, Ham Hill Stone from Somerset, a locally developed ferruginous, sandy and shelly limestone, has been widely used as a building stone and is still actively quarried (Durman 2006).

These typical grey Lias limestones pass laterally into coarser conglomeratic limestones, representing beach or cliff-line depositsion at the coastline of this Lower Jurassic sea. They are preserved only in the South Wales and Bristol areas. In South Wales these whitish, coarse grained Lias rocks are termed the Sutton Stone and in the Bristol / Somerset area the Brockley Down Limestone (Downside Stone), both have been widely used locally as building stones.

Middle Jurassic building stone resources

The principal source of building limestones in the UK is the Middle Jurassic succession of southern and eastern England, many of the limestones having been quarried for building stones since Roman times. The Middle Jurassic of this area comprises the Inferior and Great Oolite Limestone groups, a mixed succession of calcareous mudstones and coarsely oolitic and shelly limestones. Even though they may be quarried at widely different localities the Middle Jurassic limestones often show very similar characteristics and it can be difficult for the untrained eye to tell them apart. Most of the limestone beds have been worked for freestone for building, at least on a local scale but some have reached a pre-eminent position in our building stone history.

The limestones of the Inferior Oolite Group outcrop extensively from Dorset to Lincoln. Some of the best known freestones from this unit include the Guiting, Doulting (Wells Cathedral), Dundry (Llandaff Cathedral), Whittington (Cheltenham Stone; Price 2007) and Painswick stones of Gloucestershire and Somerset and the Lincolnshire Limestones from Ketton (various Cambridge colleges), Clipsham (extensively used for on-going restoration the Palace of Westminster), Weldon, Barnack (Peterborough Cathedral), Stamford, Ancaster (Wollaton Hall) and Lincoln (Silver Bed of Lincoln Cathedral) in Rutland & Lincolnshire. The high quality of these stones is self evident from their widespread and continuing usage and it bears repeating that the geological term Inferior Oolite has nothing at all to do with quality and is used simply to denote their position beneath the Great Oolite Group. 

In the Northampton-Kettering area the Inferior Oolite Group also includes substantial ironstone beds similar in character to those of the Marlstone Rock Formation in the underlying Lias. These dark orange-brown, shelly and oolitic ironstones were also used extensively in the past for building stone. Good examples of their use can be seen at Blisworth and Wellingborough (Sutherland 2003).

The limestones of the overlying Great Oolite Group include the important Bath stones (Box Ground, Stoke Ground, Westwood Ground, Combe Down, Monk's Park etc.), the Cotswold and Oxfordshire stones (Taynton, Windrush, Barrington etc. Arkell 1977) and others that are locally important such as the Blisworth Limestone.

The Bath Stone mines and quarries have a long history of production going back to Roman times. Their greatest phase of exploitation took place throughout the 19th century when these pale yellow oolitic limestones were widely exported for use in the towns and cities of the southern Britain. London, for example, has many 19th century buildings originally built of Bath Stone (Buckingham Palace, Aspley House). Mining of the stone was so extensive that much of the environs of Bath are undermined by tens of kilometres of subterranean caverns.

Over much of the Cotswolds the Great Oolite limestones, though of equally high quality and extensively quarried for local building, never achieved the enviable reputations and hence commercial success of either the neighbouring Bath or Oxford stone quarries. The best known of the Oxford stones is probably the Taynton Stone, which together with stones from several other quarries along the Windrush valley, were used extensively in many of the prestigious Oxford colleges, churches and other buildings in the area (Bleinheim Palace), from Medieval times until relatively recently.

Within the Middle Jurassic succession other limestone units were exploited not as freestone but because of their well developed thinly bedded and fissile nature (Hughes 2003). Such fissile limestone units could be split into thin sheets and dressed to provide stone slates for roofing local buildings.

Extensive quarrying and mining of these limestones also took place across the outcrop from the Cotswolds into Rutland. Stonesfield (Oxfordshire) and Colleyweston (Rutland) were two of the better known areas of stone slate mining but dozens of small quarries also exploited the limestones from other limestone units like the Forest Marble (Judd 1875; Woodward 1894; Aston 1974)

Upper Jurassic building limestone resources
The Upper Jurassic succession of southern Britain is dominated by mudstones with subordinate limestones, sandstones and ironstones. However, possibly the best known of all of Britain's building stones, the white oolitic and shelly Portland Stone, along with several locally important limestones, are quarried from this part of the Jurassic succession. The pre-eminance of the Portland Stone is all the more surprising when you consider that it has only been exploited commercially since the late 17th C. There is little or no evidence of its use before this date, outside the local area, despite its obvious qualities and the accessibility of the quarries by sea. Portland Stone has been used extensively in many of Britain's towns and cities (e.g. in civic and university buildings in Cardiff, Nottingham, Leeds and Liverpool). Its most widespread use is in London where it has proved to be particularly resistant to modem day problems of pollution (St Pauls, Whitehall, Admiralty Arch etc). In the Vale of Wardour equivalent beds of the Portland Stone include the sandy limestones mined at Chilmark. The Chilmark or Tisbury Stone, which was used to build Salisbury Cathedral and many other local buildings, is still mined and quarried in the Chilmark-Tisbury area.

Other limestones from the Upper Jurassic which have been exploited for building on a local scale are the oolitic limestones of the Corallian Group in the Headington and Wheatley quarries of Oxfordshire. They were originally the first choice stone for many college buildings in Oxford but poor durability eventually restricted their use far outside the local area. Corallian limestones were also used in the North Yorkshire Abbeys at Rievaulx and Byland (Senior 19??) Limestones from the Isle of Purbeck area of Dorset were also commonly worked in mines along their coastal outcrop. Perhaps more famous, however, is the darker so called Purbeck 'Marble' a thin, hard fossiliferous freshwater limestone which when cut and polished was widely used to make decorative columns and fonts in churches and cathedrals throughout southern England (Woodward 1894). Heavy stone slates were also produced from the thinner beds of Purbeck limestone, notably at Swanage and Swindon (Arkell 1947).

11. Cretaceous building stone resources

The Lower and Upper Cretaceous rocks of south eastern England have never yielded building limestone as prolifically as did the Jurassic successions, but they do contain a number of stones which in the past supported active local industries.

Lower Cretaceous
In sharp contrast to the marine limestone successions of the Jurassic, the Lower Cretaceous of southern England is dominated by a thick succession of freshwater clays, with only thin non-marine and paralic limestone and sandstone beds developed which were suitable for building purposes.. The lithologies exploited for building stone in the Lower Cretaceous succession were very varied and include fossiliferous limestones (Paludina marble), spicular sandstone - composed almost entirely of siliceous sponge spicules (Reigate Stone aka Malmstone or Firestone), and calcareous and variably glauconitic sandstones (the Oldbury, Ightham, Sandgate, Kentish Ragstone, Pulborough, Bargate, Tunbridge Wells, Horsham and Ashdown stones).

The Paludina Marble (aka Bethersden, Sussex or Petworth marbles) was extensively exploited for building and decorative stone in the Weald area (Topley 1875; Worssam & Tatton-Brown 1993). The 'marble' is a hard, fossiliferous freshwater limestone which could be quarried in blocks up to 3 feet in thickness in some places (Arnold 1896). The numerous freshwater gastropods present (Viviparus sussexiensis) give it its characteristic coarsely mottled appearance when polished. The stone was widely used for decorative effect in churches in Sussex and Kent.

The more siliceous nature of the Reigate Stone made it ideally suited for fire-resistant hearthstones and oven linings and the stone was extensively mined for this purpose but was also used for local building over several centuries (Sowan 1975). The most widely exploited of these Lower Cretaceous stones is the Kentish Ragstone, a hybrid mix of quartz sand and limestone which, despite its fairly intractable nature, once formed the basis of a major quarrying industry in the Maidstone area of Kent. Few older stone buildings in Kent or London are without some Kentish Ragstone in their fabric. A particular feature of some of the limestones and sandstones from the Lower Cretaceous is the presence of the vivid green mineral glauconite for example, Fovant and Hurdcott stones. Its presence can impart a distinctive green coloration to some of the rocks.

Upper Cretaceous
The Upper Cretaceous succession in Britain is dominated by chalk lithologies. In general these fine, white to pale grey chalky limestones (commonly known as Clunch) are relatively soft and needed to be protected from the weather. They were principally used for interior carved stone decoration. Three areas were particularly noted for chalk production in the past, the Totternhoe quarries and mines in Bedfordshire, Burwell in Cambridgshire and the Beer mines in Devon (Jukes-Brown 1904; Dimes 1990).

Chalk from Totternhoe was widely used for intricate internal decorative carving as in Peterborough Cathedral and the walling of the great abbey and house at Wobum. The Burwell Stone was also used for intricate carved work, as in the Lady Chapel at Ely Cathedral. The Chalk of the Beer Quarries has been exploited since Roman times, it is a hard variety which has been widely used for both external and internal stone work at Exeter Cathedral and in numerous church windows throughout the south-west.

The Upper Cretaceous chalk successions are also the principal source of another important building stone of past times, the extremely hard and durable, siliceous black white or grey flints. They provided the basic walling material for many buildings of the south east of England where freestones are generally in short supply. Flints are found as irregularly shaped nodular bands throughout the Middle and Upper Chalk successions of eastern England. They were widely used from Roman times as rubble walling, embedded in thick lime mortars (e.g. St. Albans Cathedral). In later periods the flints were precisely dressed or squared to form intricately patterned block-work within wall fabrics (Mason 1978; Hart 2002). Brandon in Suffolk was a major centre for the shaping or knapping of flints for building and other purposes.

Tertiary building stone resources
Tertiary sedimentary outcrops are restricted to the Hampshire and London basins in the south of England. They would appear at first sight to be unlikely candidates for providing building stone because of the generally poorly consolidated nature of the successions. However, the lack of building stone resources in the south east of England in general has meant that two lithologies in particular formed important local building stone resources in the past. The best known of these stones are probably the Sarsen stones, which are silica cemented sandstones, developed extensively in the Woolwich and Reading formations (Lambeth Group) and in the Barton Beds, and exposed at the surface by subsequent erosion. The wide distribution of these sandstones in buildings of the London Basin has been documented by Potter (1998). The second stone of note comes from the Tertiary succession of the Hampshire Basin. This stone is a fossiliferous freshwater limestone commonly known as Quarr Stone and was quarried from the Eocene Bembridge Limestone Formation. The limestone was an important medieval and later building material both locally in the Isle of Wight and in Hampshire but was also used occasionally imported into London (Ashurst & Dimes 1990).

A third source of building stone of much more restricted use was the hard ‘septarian’ nodules that are widely developed in the London Clay Formation. These large limestone nodules were widely used as a source of lime (cementstones) for cement in the 19th Century but in earlier times were also widely used as rubble wallstone as at Orford Castle in Suffolk.

Quaternary building stone resources

Unlikely as it first seems, in view of the unconsolidated nature of the British Quaternary succession, the period has also yield a considerable amount of building stone. The stone in question is the freshwater limestone deposit known as tufa. Tufa (or travertine) is a distinctive building stone with a limited local distribution in some limestone areas. It is most commonly formed by precipitation of calcium carbonate around springs discharging and degassing from limestone successions (Pentecost 1993). The Carboniferous, Middle Jurassic and Cretaceous limestone and chalky limestone outcrops were once important sources of such tufa deposits.

Dursley Tufa was used extensively at Berkeley Castle for example. Although originally quite common in many of the limestone areas around Britain the deposits are now largely worked out and the stone is no longer available in quantity. As a building material it has a long history. It was particularly favoured by the Romans, for example in Chesters Fort on Hadrian's Wall and its use has been recorded in other Roman structures. Tufa was also much prized by Norman (e.g. St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury) and later medieval builders. It is easily worked, strong, highly porous and therefore light. These properties made it a suitable choice for vaulting masonry in churches and cathedrals. Tufa was also much in demand in Victorian times for constructing show-piece garden 'grottos'.

Today's building limestone industry

Today's building limestone industry is still thriving, both for new-build and conservation work, but it has contracted considerably. Building limestone production is still centred principally on the Jurassic outcrops around Bath, in Somerset, the Cotswolds, Wiltshire (Chilmark), Oxfordshire (Hornton), Dorset (Portland & Purbeck) and Lincolnshire (Ancaster, Clipsham, Ketton, Stamford) and Leicestershire.

Present state of the building stone industry

Increasingly the extra demands being made on the stone producers has seen them begin to put their house in order. New British Standards and tighter EC proposals will demand much more information is made available about the properties of building stones. 

The dimension stone industry has to continue its efforts to educate and inform the public of the differences in scale of these two ventures if we are to continue to produce dimension stone, not only to conserve our existing historic stone structures but also to build new stone housing, thus complementing and continuing a vernacular building tradition which has developed over several centuries. These traditional skills  have provided us with some of our most picturesque villages and towns and provided many parts of Britain with a unique regional architectural identity. As far as Britain's building stone industry is concerned the catch phrase should be 'variety is the spice of life' we need to encourage usage of old and new stone in our buildings and not allow this rich heritage in stone to dwindle away.

Recommended reading 

Arkell, W.J. 1977. Oxford Stone. Faber & Faber.

Amold, E 1896. Sussex Marble. The Quarry, 1896, pp.83-84.

Ashurst, J. & Dimes, F.G.  1990. The Conservation of Building and Decorative Stone. Butterworth-Heinemann.

Coulson, M. (ed) 2005. Stone in Wales. Materials, Heritage and Conservation. CADW.

Dimes, F.G. & Mitchell M. 2006. The Building Stone Heritage of Leeds. The Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society Ltd.

Durman, R. 2006. Ham Hill: portrait of a stone. Spire books Ltd.

Fairweather, B. 1974. A short history of Ballachullish Slate Quarry. Glencoe & North Lorn Folk Museum.

Hart, S. 2000. Flint Architecture of East Anglia. Giles de Mare Publishers, London.

Lott, G.K. 2001. Geology and building stones in the East Midlands. Mercian Geologist 15, 97-122.

Mason, H.1. 1978. Flint - the versatile stone. Providence Press.

McMillan, A. A, Gillanders R.J. & Fairhurst, J.A. 1999. The Building Stones of Edinburgh. Edinburgh Geological Society

Parsons, D. 1991. Stone. in Blair, J & Ramsey, N. (eds) English Medieval Industries craftsmen, techniques and products. Hambleton Press.

Price, A. 2007. Cheltenham Stone. The Whittington Quarries. Cotteswold Naturalists Field Club.

Richey, J.E. and Anderson, 1.G.C. 1945? Scottish Slates. Geological Survey of Great Britain Wartime Pamphlet No. 45.

Senior, J. R., 1989. The selection of dimensional and ornamental stone types used in some northern monasteries – the exploitation and distribution of a natural resource', in Gilchrist and Mytum (Eds), pp. 223–50. The Archaeology of Rural Monasteries, British Archaeological. Report. British Series, 203 (Oxford)

Senior, J .R. 1991. Hildenley Limestone: a fine quality dimensional and artifact stone from Yorkshire. Pp. 147-68. In Parsons, D. Stone quarrying and building in England AD 43-1525. (Chichester).

Sowan 1975 Tucker, D.G. 1976. The Slate Quarries at Easdale, Argyllshire Scotland. Post Medieval Archaeology 10,118-30.

Sutherland, D. 2002. Northamptonshire Stone. The Dovecote press.

Viner, D.J. 1992. The Iona Marble Quarry. New Iona Press.

Watson, J. 1911. British and Foreign Building Stones. Cambridge at the University Press.

Wood, C. 2003. Stone Roofing. English Heritage Transactions. Vol 9. English Heritage.

Watson, J. 1916. British and Foreign Marbles and other Ornamental Stones. Cambridge at the University Press.

Woodward, H.B. 1894. The Jurassic Rocks of Britain. Memoir of the Geological Survey of Great Britain.