Stone Mines and Quarries
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- See also Combe Down and Bathampton Down Mines.
The mines at Combe Down were Oolitic (oolite) limestone mines, mainly worked in the 18th and 19th century. Stone was extracted by the "room and pillar" method, by which chambers were mined out, leaving pillars of stone to support the roof. The Bath stone used for many of the buildings in Bath - as well as for other important buildings around the United Kingdom including Buckingham Palace - was mined from beneath and around Combe Down. Many of these workings were once owned by the eighteenth century Postmaster General Ralph Allen (1694–1764). The mines were closed in the 19th century but building work continued above ground, with some roads and houses eventually resting on only a thin crust — in places between only one and two metres deep — above large underground cavities with inadequate support.
A five-year central government-funded project began in late 2005 to stabilise and fill the abandoned mine workings. The Council approved the planning application in June 2003 and approximately 760 village properties were included within its boundary. All mine workings inside the boundary of the planning application were stabilised using foamed concrete to satisfy a 100-year design life while ensuring archaeologically important areas and bat habitats were protected. In some hydrologically sensitive areas, "stowing" - an infill with aggregate limestone — was undertaken. Archaeologically important areas were filled with sand, and new bat caves and tunnels were created.
The £154.6 million grant for the works came from the Land Stabilisation Programme which was set up by the government in 1999 to deal with "abandoned non-coal mine workings which are likely to collapse and threaten life and property" and managed by English Partnerships — the national regeneration agency. The total amount included £22.7m which had already been used for emergency stabilisation work before the approval of the main project.
Several public art projects celebrated the completion of the stabilisation works.
One working quarry (Upper Lawn Quarry) remains on the edge of the village, located off Shaft Road. This supplies high quality Bath stone to the city and more widely across the UK.
Read more about this topic: Combe Down
Famous quotes containing the words stone, mines and/or quarries:
“It was a cruel city, but it was a lovely one, a savage city, yet it had such tenderness, a bitter, harsh, and violent catacomb of stone and steel and tunneled rock, slashed savagely with light, and roaring, fighting a constant ceaseless warfare of men and of machinery; and yet it was so sweetly and so delicately pulsed, as full of warmth, of passion, and of love, as it was full of hate.”
—Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938)
“The humblest observer who goes to the mines sees and says that gold-digging is of the character of a lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same thing with the wages of honest toil. But, practically, he forgets what he has seen, for he has seen only the fact, not the principle, and goes into trade there, that is, buys a ticket in what commonly proves another lottery, where the fact is not so obvious.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Three million of such stones would be needed before the work was done. Three million stones of an average weight of 5,000 pounds, every stone cut precisely to fit into its destined place in the great pyramid. From the quarries they pulled the stones across the desert to the banks of the Nile. Never in the history of the world had so great a task been performed. Their faith gave them strength, and their joy gave them song.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)