How we got the stone which made buildings
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HUMAN beings have never been afraid to move large quantities of stone considerable distances. The supreme example is Stonehenge, for which stones weighing four tons were brought a distance of 240 miles to Salisbury Plain from South Wales.
For proof of the same more locally, take a stroll round Gloucester city centre.
There are ancient quarries on nearby Robinswood Hill and Chosen Hill, yet when the Cathedral was being built stone from further off Catbrain Quarry at Painswick was chosen for the job. (Incidentally, the stone used for restoration work today is imported from France.)
Cotswold oolite was used to build St Michael’s tower at The Cross, St John’s church and St Mary de Crypt, although the altar screen in the latter Southgate Street church is carved from stone brought from Normandy.
Lloyds TSB in Eastgate Street is faced with granite from Scandinavia.
The Eastgate Street entrance to the shopping centre is made from Bath stone, while the much more modern frontage of what used to be BHS features Hollington sandstone from Staffordshire.
Tewkesbury Abbey was built mainly in stone from Caen, northern France, which was brought by sea around the toe of Cornwall, up the Bristol Channel and then the Severn.
Stone was quarried locally on land that is now Tewkesbury Park as early as the 16th century and there are also old workings on the Mythe.
Cotswold tile roofs are few and far between in Tewkesbury itself, but look round many villages in the borough, such as Winchcombe, Gotherington and Bishop’s Cleeve, and you’ll see many examples.
The best stone for Cotswold roofs is called Pendal and is found at a depth of about eight feet. Traditionally the stone was quarried in October, then left to over-winter so that frost could season the stone.
The following spring the limestone was split into layers from which the tiles were shaped.
Because the tiles are pervious, Cotswold roofs must be steeply pitched so that rain runs off quickly and doesn’t seep into the tiles.
Look closely and you’ll notice that the tiles are far from uniform.
In fact they range in size from tiny tiles of about six inches wide at the ridge, increasing to tiles of about two feet wide at the eaves.
Each size of slate has its own name. These vary from one part of the Cotswold to another, but include such delights as Cocks Long and Cocks Short, Tants, Muffities and Becks, Batchelors, Cussems, Short and Long Vibbots, Maverdays, Wivetts, Wippets and Chivelers.
Leckhampton Quarry on the outskirts of Cheltenham was once a major supplier of building stone in the area.
A reminder can be seen in the garden wall of a house at the junction of Ewlyn Road and Leckhampton Road.
Unfortunately, all but one section of this wall has been replaced by timber fencing, but take a look and you’ll notice that the remaining stonework doesn’t match.
Quite the contrary in fact. Some of the stones are smooth faced, some roughly cut. Some are patterned, others plain. They’re in different shapes and sizes too.
The reason for this apparently ramshackle design is that the wall was built to showcase the different styles and grades of stone produced by the quarry on Leckhampton Hill.
The house the wall surrounded was home to the works manager, a man named John Weaver, who lived there in the early part of the 20th century.
If you were a building developer at that time and were looking for stone to meet the needs of your next project, you could pop along to Mr Weaver’s house and see all the kinds of stone in their various styles that were available.
The garden wall was the quarry’s shop window.
Leckhampton stone was used to build many of Cheltenham’s 19th century churches and schools.
But via the plateway that ran from the quarries to Gloucester Docks and later, the railway, markets were found for the stone further afield.
Shire Hall in Gloucester and Our Lady of St Alpage’s church in Bath were built with the local stone, as was Magdelen College chapel in Oxford.
Other buildings in 19th century Cheltenham, including Christchurch, St Luke’s and St Paul’s churches, Thirlestaine House, Cheltenham College and Cambray Spa (which stood in what is now Rodney Road car park) were built with stone from the underground quarry at Whittington.
These subterranean tunnels, which also supplied stone used to build the Houses of Parliament, stretch for two miles into Dowdeswell Hill and the workings cover 25 acres.
In its 19th century hey day, Whittington Quarry employed around 100 people.
Today the vast warren of underground galleries can on occasion be explored with an expert guide leading the way. Fascinating, but not for the claustrophobic.