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.

Dewsbury townhall Carboniferous sandstone
 

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.

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