Another from a fairly recent trip to Gloucestershire. I had actually been right next to this place last year exploring the rather brilliant Hawthorns Tunnel which is situated right next to the quarry but for some reason (probably hunger and a very hot day) we decided against doing the quarry on that occasion.
@Bikin Glynn found some excellent history on the place for his post last year, so I'll just summarise what he said here for the sake of not repeating everything.
The current quarry is owned by Hanson and is numbered 484 in their network. Operations began mining Drybrook Limestone in 1868, and lasted until 1918. After 1960 the quarry was significantly expanded by Amey Roadstone Corporation, producing aggregates for the construction industry as well as lime for agricultural usage. Works shut down some time in the last five or so years apparently, it was definitely still active in 2016 but becomes a little fuzzy to find solid information on afterwards.
As is the usual case when it comes to anything owned by Hanson, they love to chop staircases off of all their structures, comically even the little tiny ones that only would have had a couple of steps up at most. So to get to the decent stuff here requires a little bit of climbing around, although thankfully there is a nice easy way up to one of the three towers if you have a head for heights. We couldn't see a sensible way up into the middle tower so left it, although I suspect it may well be pretty much an identical set up to the one closest to the entrance. The owl was also nowhere to be seen on this visit much to my disappointment, although there was an incredibly tame pigeon sat in the top of one of the towers which I didn't even notice until I walked literally right next to it, it had a tag on each leg so I assume it was a homing pigeon of some variety, it was completely unbothered by our presence unlike the wild pigeons that flap about and fly into things when you get near them.
After working out the somewhat convoluted but fairly simple way into the site it turned out to be a very chill, peaceful explore.
Thanks for looking
@Bikin Glynn found some excellent history on the place for his post last year, so I'll just summarise what he said here for the sake of not repeating everything.
The current quarry is owned by Hanson and is numbered 484 in their network. Operations began mining Drybrook Limestone in 1868, and lasted until 1918. After 1960 the quarry was significantly expanded by Amey Roadstone Corporation, producing aggregates for the construction industry as well as lime for agricultural usage. Works shut down some time in the last five or so years apparently, it was definitely still active in 2016 but becomes a little fuzzy to find solid information on afterwards.
As is the usual case when it comes to anything owned by Hanson, they love to chop staircases off of all their structures, comically even the little tiny ones that only would have had a couple of steps up at most. So to get to the decent stuff here requires a little bit of climbing around, although thankfully there is a nice easy way up to one of the three towers if you have a head for heights. We couldn't see a sensible way up into the middle tower so left it, although I suspect it may well be pretty much an identical set up to the one closest to the entrance. The owl was also nowhere to be seen on this visit much to my disappointment, although there was an incredibly tame pigeon sat in the top of one of the towers which I didn't even notice until I walked literally right next to it, it had a tag on each leg so I assume it was a homing pigeon of some variety, it was completely unbothered by our presence unlike the wild pigeons that flap about and fly into things when you get near them.
After working out the somewhat convoluted but fairly simple way into the site it turned out to be a very chill, peaceful explore.
Thanks for looking
