OR/13/015 Building stone quarries in the Falkirk area: Difference between revisions

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| BAILEY, G. 2013. Falkirk Building Stone. Message to Emily Tracey, 22 January 2013.
| ! scope="col" style="width: 400px;" | BAILEY, G. 2013. Falkirk Building Stone. Message to Emily Tracey, 22 January 2013.
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Revision as of 09:12, 24 August 2021

Gillespie, M R, Everett, P A, Albornoz-Parra, L J, and Tracey, E A. 2013. A survey of building stone and roofing slate in Falkirk town centre. Nottingham, UK, British geological Survey. (OR/13/015).

Introduction

The objective of this part of the project is to identify quarries in and around Falkirk that have, or may have, supplied some of the stone used in the Falkirk THI area. For the purposes of the project, the assessment was conducted within a rectangular area defined approximately by the north, south, east and west limits of the area administered by Falkirk Council. Information relating to this ‘search area’ was compiled through a desk-top assessment of BGS resources, historical records, Ordnance Survey (OS) maps, and reference texts. Published reference materials are referenced in the normal way in section 7. Those that have not been published are listed in Table 6. The assessment was conducted relatively briefly, and without visiting libraries and other sources of archived information in Falkirk and the surrounding area. While it provides an overview of quarries and quarrying activity in the area it does not provide a comprehensive account. Details relating to individual quarries are generally held in local archives and a more detailed study would be required to obtain a comprehensive account.

Table 6    Sources of unpublished information used in the assessment of building stone quarries.
1 BAILEY, G. 2013. Falkirk Building Stone. Message to Emily Tracey, 22 January 2013.
2 BRITPITS (BGS Database of Mines and Quarries, 2012 version). The BritPits database contains records for more than one hundred thousand active and historical mines, quarries and pits throughout

the UK.

3 RCAHMS (The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland Canmore

database) [online]. [Cited February 2013] Available from https://www.rcahms.gov.uk/canmore.html/

4 FALKIRK LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY. [2005a]. Polmont and Brightons [online]. [Cited 21 January

2013]. Available from https://www.falkirklocalhistorysociety.co.uk/

5 FALKIRK LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY. [2005b]. Maddiston [online]. [Cited 21 January 2013].

Available from https://www.falkirklocalhistorysociety.co.uk/

6 ORDNANCE SURVEY MAPS (historical Six Inch maps, first, second and third editions).


Some of the sources listed above are also referred to in Table A4_1 (Appendix 4).

4.2 OUTCOMES The main outcomes of the desk-top assessment of building stone quarries in the Falkirk area are summarised below.

Number and distribution of quarries The assessment identified 156 quarries within the search area that have produced sandstone for building stone. The locations and names of these quarries are shown in Figure 15, and summary details for them are presented in Appendix 4. No record was found of any stone type other than sandstone (e.g. granite, whinstone, limestone) having been produced within the search area for use as building stone. Basalt for kerb and paving stones has been extracted from quarries near Kilsyth, several kilometres west of the search area.1


Figure 15 Quarries in the Falkirk area that have produced sandstone building stone Red outline is the Falkirk Council area (approximate). See Figure 4, Figure 5 and section 2.2 for details of the bedrock geology, and Appendix 4 for a table of summary quarry details.


Sixty-six quarries are within the area administered by Falkirk Council. The remainder are in areas administered by neighbouring councils: twenty-nine are in Stirling, seventeen in West Lothian, sixteen in North Lanarkshire, and twenty-eight in Fife.




1 Garrel Glen Quarry and Auchinstarry Quarry, Kilsyth, were recorded to be supplying ‘inexhaustible’ amounts of paving stone during the late 18th Century. The paving stone would have been sent predominantly to Glasgow along the Forth & Clyde Canal. (Rennie, 1796; page 230)

Dates of operation Written records that pinpoint the start and end of quarrying activity are relatively rare. Old maps can help to place constraints on the timing of quarrying activity, but a detailed examination of this resource is beyond the scope of this assessment. The earliest building stones would have been collected from unconsolidated surface deposits (e.g. riverbed deposits and field boulders) and exposed areas of bedrock, and used in nearby constructions. The first significant quarries probably appeared during the mid- to late-18th Century. Some will have had a single, short phase of activity (providing stone for a specific project) while others will have a longer history, possibly involving intermittent activity. Quarrying activity peaked in the 19th Century in line with major improvements to transport infrastructure, and declined sharply around the turn of the 20th Century. The last building stone quarries in the area ceased production in the early 20th Century.2

Present status None of the building stone quarries in the Falkirk area remains open today. An evaluation of the present condition of the quarries (and hence the potential for re-opening) is beyond the scope of this assessment, but a significant proportion is likely to have been ‘sterilised’ by, for example, infilling or flooding. The Bantaskine quarries, which probably supplied substantial quantities of building stone to Falkirk (section 5), are still accessible though overgrown.

Bedrock geology The quarries are relatively evenly distributed across the main sedimentary bedrock units in the search area (Figure 15; see also section 2.2 for a description of the bedrock units mentioned below). Eleven quarries are in the West Lothian Oil Shale Formation, and twelve are in the Lower Limestone Formation; both these units occupy a relatively small proportion of the search area. Twenty-seven are in the Limestone Coal Formation, which also underlies a relatively small proportion of the search area. Thirty-one are in the Upper Limestone Formation, forty-three are in the Passage Formation, and thirty-two are in the Scottish Lower Coal Measures Formation; these units underlie larger proportions of the search area. Thick deposits of unconsolidated sediment (deposited during and since the last glaciation), including sand, gravel, silt and clay, are present in some areas, notably in low ground around the River Forth and Forth Estuary. These deposits will have limited or prevented access to bedrock; hence there are few, or no, quarries in some areas (e.g. around Grangemouth and Stenhousemuir).

Influence of transport infrastructure Before mechanized transport, Falkirk buildings would have utilised stone that was sourced locally, mainly from quarries to the south of the town. Anything sourced from further afield would have been transported along the Forth Estuary and up the River Carron. As early as 1697 stone was supplied from Airth to build The Steeple in Falkirk town centre (Bailey). The first roofing slates would have come from the Highlands, and these probably would have been transported on drove roads. The development of engineered transport infrastructure had a significant influence on quarry locations (Figure 16). Substantial quantities of stone would have been required for the Forth and



2 Maddiston Quarry, Maddiston, near Brightons is one of the few quarries in the search area that was still in operation after the 1899 OS map; the quarry was marked ‘disused’ on the 1922 OS map.

Clyde Canal3 and Union Canal (1822) projects, and for the two main rail lines (Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, opened in 1842; and Stirlingshire Midland Junction Railway, opened in 1850); quarries would have been opened close to these structures, specifically to supply stone. For example, in the mid-19th Century, seven quarries were in operation between Castlecary and Falkirk ‘for furnishing stones for the railroad and viaducts’ (Burns, 1845; page 19). Many quarries that opened subsequently would have been sited to take advantage of a nearby transport artery; for example, quarrying near Dunipace commenced when the Union Canal opened, bringing stone into Falkirk as well as Edinburgh.4


Figure 16 Transport arteries developed in the 18th and 19th centuries in the Falkirk area

The Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway passes through the south side of Falkirk (Falkirk High Station) and the Stirlingshire Midland Junction Railway passes through the north side of Falkirk (Falkirk Grahamston Station). As a direct result of the vastly improved transportation infrastructure, it became economically viable to use building stone from beyond the local area in Falkirk buildings. Stone that was of a higher quality than, or distinctly different to, the local stone was imported from other parts of the UK particularly for use in prestigious buildings. For example, rail lines connected the Midland Valley to the Southern Uplands by 1850 and by the end of the 19th Century Permian orange sandstone introduced from sources in Dumfriesshire and Ayrshire was much in demand for ashlar.

Quarry size and stone distribution Many quarries would have been created to supply stone for nearby building projects (e.g. a large house, estate buildings or an infrastructure project); these quarries would in general have been relatively small and active for only a short period of time. Others were developed to supply


3 Work on the Forth & Clyde Canal began in the summer of 1768; by 1775 the canal was fit for navigation, and by 1790 it was fully operational from sea to sea. The canal had such an impact on the area that Sir Lawrence Dundas built a village and quay at the east end of his estate in 1777, now named Grangemouth. Grangemouth Port is one of the main ports in the UK today. 4 Paving stone bound for Edinburgh and produced by Drumhead Quarry, near Denny, was the first shipment on the Union Canal, in 1822 (Tracey et al., 2011).

building stone commercially (e.g. Binny, Blackcraig [Plean], Dunmore and Polmaise quarries), and these in general are larger and were active for a longer period. The search area includes several quarries that have produced well-known and widely used building stone sandstone; for example, Polmaise (University of Edinburgh McEwan Hall, 1887-97), Binny (Scott Monument, Edinburgh, 1840-4), Dunmore (Coltbridge Hall, St. George’s School, 1875) and Kingscavil (Linlithgow Palace, 15th-17th centuries) quarries.

Links to Falkirk This assessment has revealed very few records that directly link the stone from a particular quarry to Falkirk THI area, or to the town of Falkirk in general. Such records may exist, but more detailed research on a quarry-by-quarry basis would be required to find them. The information linking building stone quarries and Falkirk is summarised below. The largest quarries near Falkirk exploited the Scottish Lower Coal Measures Formation, in particular sandstone beds known as ‘Brightons Rock’ below the Armadale Ball Coal. Brightons Rock was discussed by Ker (1845): “the dip of the strata generally is to the north-east, except when their position is altered by a dike which traverses one part of the parish [Polmont], as exemplified in Brighton’s Quarry, when the strata in consequence dip to the north-west”. Brightons quarry supplied good quality brownish rock; Ker (1845; page 192) noted that “stones of any size can be procured”. Building stone from Brightons quarry was shipped to Edinburgh (c.1822) and Falkirk (c.1850) along the Union Canal (Falkirk Local History Society, 2005a). Brightons quarry is thought to have been active as early as the 17th Century (Falkirk Local History Society, 2005a), and was the only active quarry in Polmont Parish at the time of the 1845 Statistical Accounts; however, the nearby Lathallan quarry was preparing to open at this time. Lathallan quarry exploited a bed of sandstone that was lower in the strata sequence than the stone at Brightons quarry. The stone was white, hard and durable (Ker, 1845; page 192). The quarries at Bantaskine, south-west of Falkirk, were created to exploit the Upper Drumgray Coal seam, but sandstone beds above and below the coal seam were later quarried and used as building stone (Cameron et al., 1988). A quarry was operating at the time of the 1864 OS map, but is marked ‘Old Quarry’ on the 1899 OS map. The colliery re-opened in 1946; colliery activity peaked in 1954 and ceased in 1959 (RCAHMS/CANMORE). None of the written records examined for this assessment explicitly link sandstone from the Bantaskine quarries with Falkirk buildings; however, a local authority (Bailey) has suggested anecdotally that sandstone from Bantaskine was a source of building stone for Falkirk. Building stone was probably sourced from these quarries for constructing the canals and railways. By 1860 several other quarries in the area - including Haining, Maddiston and Mannelrig - were supplying building stone (Hunt, 1860; and OS maps). All quarries were inactive by the turn of the 20th Century with the exception of Maddiston quarry, which was still active when the 1899 OS map was published but had closed by the time the 1922 OS map was published. Sandstone from quarries in the Callendar House policies was used for the Union Canal and in Falkirk buildings (Bailey). The 1864 OS map shows two quarries: Callendar Park Quarry and Callendar House Quarry (north-east of Callendar Loch); both had closed by 1899 (OS maps). The former is infilled and used as a car park; the latter is partly infilled and overgrown. During the mid-19th Century, several quarries on the Dunmore Estate near Airth were operated by Falkirk-based owners (Hunt, 1860), and building stone from these quarries might have made its way to Falkirk for use in construction. The Dunmore quarries exploited the Passage Formation, and they supplied both freestone (for masonry) and flagstone (for paving). Many other quarries exploited the Passage Formation, but the sandstone was commonly too soft and coarse grained for dimension stone (Cameron et al., 1988) and was therefore typically used on a small and local scale.