Why are the Quarries in Whittle-le-Woods and Brindle where they are?

A few years ago, I took an Open University module entitled “Introduction to Geology”. Now, I like academic study and I’m good at it, but this module was the hardest I’ve ever attempted. I’m used to the humanities and the social sciences and dealing mostly with people or concepts. The hard science (no pun intended) of rocks and minerals taxed my understanding and I only got a C as my final grade. However, I enjoyed the module very much and it enabled me to answer the question posed in the title of this article: why are the local quarries situated where they are (and why are there so many of them)? I will focus mainly on Whittle-le-Woods (hereafter Whittle), but I will also consider the neighbouring townships of Brindle, Hoghton and Clayton-le-Woods.

The History of Quarrying in the Whittle Area

There have long been quarries in Whittle and the surrounding area, extracting stone for building and making millstones, and also extracting sand and gravel. Local legend has it that the Romans quarried in Whittle. This suggestion is based on the discovery in 1837 of a hoard of Roman coins near the present day quarries. There was indeed a Roman road that ran close to Whittle (roughly following the current A49 Wigan-Preston road) and there was a Roman industrial settlement further north along that road in Walton-le-Dale (now buried under the Capitol Centre Park and Ride car park), but there is no other evidence of Roman activity in Whittle and the current whereabouts of the coin hoard is not known.

There was undoubtedly small scale quarrying from medieval times, to extract stone for local building needs. Millstones have been manufactured commercially since the middle of the 18^th century and probably before. Locally produced millstones were sold across the country and exported to Ireland. By the mid-19^th century there was a reasonably thriving quarrying industry in the Whittle area, embracing Whittle Hill quarry, Little quarry, Hilltop quarry and St Helen’s quarry. In Brindle, there was Hough Hill and Denham quarries (now joined together as Denham Hill quarry) and a little further off there is Hoghton quarry (behind Hoghton Tower). These are all stone quarries, but there were also sand quarries at Gorse Hall and near Clayton Hall.

One local guidebook suggests that at one time 500 men and boys were employed in quarrying in Whittle. This seems unlikely, as the local industry was always small in scale, far smaller than in areas such as the Rossendale moors and Longridge. 19^th century census returns never list more than 20 or 30 quarrymen or stone masons in Whittle. Local quarry masters did not grow rich. More than one farmed the adjacent land as well as managing their quarry and in 1891 John Walmsley combined quarry mastering with running the Cross Keys pub on Chorley Old Road.

Another quarry master, Robert Pickup had higher aspirations. Born in Whittle, the son of a quarryman, he began as a stone mason in Preston, but subsequently established a construction business that included Hill Top quarry in Whittle. In 1871 he proudly told the census enumerator that he was a “Builder and Contractor employing 78 men and 3 boys”. Unfortunately, pride came before a fall as the next year his business collapsed and he was declared bankrupt. He left the area and ended his days back as a stone mason, working in quarries in Wrightington and Ince.

One possible reason why Whittle’s quarries did not expand further in the 19^th century was that there was no railway in the area. A meeting was held in 1872 of quarry masters, landowners and other interested parties to set up a committee to petition the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway company to build a new line from Chorley to Preston, through Whittle, Clayton-le-Woods and Bamber Bridge. The quarry masters complained that their ability to sell stone to builders in Preston and elsewhere was compromised by the need to transport it by cart to Chorley or Leyland before it could be loaded onto trains. Robert Pickup addressed the meeting, stating, somewhat hyperbolically, that “If they could only get at Whittle Hills a market for all kinds of stone, they would get, instead of 100 tons a week, 100,000 tons a week…The stone could not be excelled, if equalled, in the United Kingdom for its quality”. A few months later his business went bust and the petition to the railway company fell on deaf ears.

The demise of Robert Pickup’s firm allows us to gain a glimpse of the range of equipment and facilities needed to run a small scale quarry in the later 19^th century, as the Hilltop quarry’s plant and tools were put up for auction. The advertisement listed:

“Two powerful double purchase cranes complete, chains, blocks, dogs, sheers, guys, picks, wedges, hammers, drills, large and small crowbars, scrap and wrought iron, smith’s anvils and bellows, 5-inch vice, slack troughs, screw jack, smith’s tools, capital 12 ton stone lurry [a kind of cart], with double shafts, in good working order; wheelbarrows, planks etc. Also, a quantity of long stone, paving setts, blocking stone, wall stone, puddle stone, sand mill in working order, cart house, stable and smithy buildings”.

Quarrying was a dangerous occupation and prior to modern health and safety legislation, accidents were common. A brief account of an inquest held at the Duke of York pub in August 1883 concerned 27 year old Thomas Fielding, of Rip Row, Whittle. While dressing a stone at Hilltop quarry, Fielding was hit by a bolt that fell off the top of a crane, “making a large hole in his head”. The verdict was accidental death and it seems unlikely that much changed as a result of the tragic incident.

In the 20^th century, machines and dynamite replaced picks, crowbars and gunpowder. Ownership of the stone quarries in Whittle was eventually consolidated into a single firm and smaller quarries were abandoned. As demand for building stone and millstones decreased, the stone extracted was increasingly crushed into aggregate, for concrete and road building. The dull booms from blasting at Whittle Hill quarry were a common sound when I moved to Whittle 30 years ago, but one by one the local quarries have closed down and quarrying has now almost ceased in the area.

So why were the Quarries where they were?

Quarrying was therefore a small scale but thriving industry in the Whittle area for many years. What was it about the locality that made it attractive to quarry masters? The short answer, of course, is that there was material in the ground that was worth extracting. But why was it there and what made it worth exploiting? To answer this question, we must understand the geology of the land around Whittle; the nature of the local rock, how it was formed and how it has come to be the way it is.

A Brief Geology Lesson

All the Earth’s land masses are situated on vast plates of “continental crust” that drift very slowly around the globe, sometimes splitting apart and sometimes colliding with each other. When continental plates come together, they crumple like cars in a head-on collision. The land ripples (known as folding) and sometimes cracks under the strain (faulting). The crumpling of colliding plates produces mountain ranges close to the area of impact.

As soon as mountains rise up, however, they begin to erode. The effects of climate and geological processes cause the rock to crumble. The resultant matter builds up on the surrounding land as sand and soil, or is washed down rivers as sand, mud and grit. Over millions of years, layers of such sediment build up and solidify under their own weight, producing new rocks. This cycle of rock formation, mountain building, erosion and the creation of new rock has happened many times during the lifetime of the Earth – whole mountain ranges have eroded away completely. “Geological time” is however very slow; continental plates move around the planet at around half an inch a year, about the rate that your fingernails grow and mountains take tens of millions of years to rise and fall.

The Creation of the Landscape around Whittle

The rocks that were quarried in the Whittle area were laid down, along with much of the rest of central northern England, in the Carboniferous period, around 320 million years ago. At this time, the British Isles was on the edge of a large landmass, situated in the tropics, south of the equator. The land that is now central northern England was then flat and was the site of a huge river delta, rather like the fan of rivers at the mouth of the Mississippi today. Huge amounts of sand, pebbles and grit was washed down the ancient rivers from eroding mountains and built up in layers, sometimes thousands of feet thick, around the delta. Over time, these layers solidified into a hard, gritty sandstone which is now known as Millstone Grit. Like a tropical rainforest, the delta was heavily vegetated with tree ferns and in places, decaying vegetation built up and also solidified, producing seams of coal. From time to time, climate variation led to the whole area becoming inundated by the sea. During these periods, mud was deposited, solidifying into softer rocks: shale or claystone. Thus, over millions of years, layers of sandstone, shale and coal were created, lying on top of each other like an enormous sandwich.

The Carboniferous period ended around 290 million years ago when the continental plate on which the British Isles lay collided with another plate – an event known as the Variscan orogeny. The collision produced a range of mountains in modern western France, Spain and Portugal and south-west Britain. Most of those mountains have now eroded away. The ripple effect from the collision ran east-west across the rest of England, folding and faulting the previously flat land that made up our river delta and turning it into the Pennines chain of mountains.

What happened between the formation of the Pennines and the present is largely unknown. It is likely that the Pennines were at one time much higher than they are now. It is also likely that other rocks were formed on top of the Carboniferous layer, but these have now disappeared. The current appearance of the land is the result of the series of Ice Ages that Britain has experienced over the past million years and specifically the most recent Ice Age that ended around 10,000 years ago. The whole of Northern Britain was covered with ice and the melting glaciers and the debris they left behind shaped the landscape. The tops of the Pennine mountains were scoured off, leaving the relatively low and flat topped hills that we see today. Much of the land was covered with layers of “drift” – soil, sand and clay from beneath and within the glaciers. In places the underlying “solid” rock is exposed and may be exploited by quarrymen.

The diagram below shows a cross section of the land between Hoghton Tower and Great Hill, on Anglezarke Moor. A number of the features mentioned above may be seen.

Cross section of the land between Hoghton Tower and Great Hill, adapted from the Geological Survey of Great Britain Sheet 75: Preston

We can see alternate layers of Millstone Grit and shale (no significant coal seams in this area). We can also see east-west folds, forming a significant hollow in the land. There are faults, in particular the Brinscall fault that thrusts the land of Anglezarke Moor upwards towards Great Hill. I have also highlighted a thick layer of Millstone Grit that is exposed on the flanks of Anglezarke Moor, is folded underground across the intervening valley and is exposed again in the ridge on which Hoghton Tower is situated. Geologists call this layer Fletcher Bank Grit (when it is exposed on Anglezarke Moor), or Revidge Grit (when it reappears in the west). Fletcher Bank or Revidge Grit is a massive coarse-grained gritstone, commonly pebbly. Its thickness and hardness makes it attractive to masons for building stone and millstones.

The next diagram looks down on the Whittle-Brindle-Hoghton area, sets out where Revidge Grit outcrops and maps the sites of the local stone quarries.

Map of Whittle, Brindle and Hoghton, showing the outcrop of Revidge Grit and the siting of stone quarries. From bottom to top, Whittle Hill quarry, Little quarry, Hilltop quarry, St Helens quarry, Denham quarry, Hough Hill quarry (now known together as Denham Hill quarry) and Hoghton quarry. Adapted from the Geological Survey of Great Britain Sheet 75: Preston

We can see that Revidge Grit outcrops in a ridge that begins near Chorley Old Road in Whittle and runs north east through Brindle to Hoghton. Faulting near Brindle has shifted it to the north west. We can also see that all the local stone quarries are situated on the outcrop of Revidge Grit. They are there because the rock is on the surface, easy to identify and to exploit. Its nature also makes it particularly good quality for building and millstones – as Robert Pickup boasted.

Quarries are found elsewhere on the outcrop of Revidge and Fletcher Bank grit. After Hoghton, the outcrop continues north east to Billinge Hill, above Witton Country Park in Blackburn and Billinge Hill is peppered with old quarries. It has also been exploited where it surfaces to the east, on the edge of Anglezarke Moor, with old quarries sited at White and Black Coppice and at Leicester Mill quarry (now a car park beside Anglezarke reservoir).

A notice board at Denham Hill quarry provides a clear and interesting overview of the origin of the rocks and quarries in the area

This face at Denham Hill quarry shows what made Revidge grit attractive to quarrymen. It is thick, hard, but also relatively easy to split into even blocks and to “dress”. The quarry is now popular with rock climbers.

This looks rather like an attempt to shape a millstone out of an outcrop of rock.

Looking north from the top of Denham Hill quarry, we can see the continuation of the outcrop of Revidge grit, appearing as an undulating ridge. To the left is Hoghton Tower and to the right, Billinge Hill. Both areas were quarried in the 19^th century.

Looking south-east from the top of the same quarry, we see Anglezarke moor rising steeply from the intervening valley. The steepness of its face is due to the effects of faulting (the Brinscall fault) that thrust it upwards relative to the adjacent rock. It is made of Fletcher Bank grit – essentially the same rock as the Revidge grit of the Whittle/Brindle area. It was also exploited for building stone and millstones; just to the right of centre we can see Black Coppice quarry.

So the mystery of the siting of Whittle’s stone quarries is solved. They are all placed to exploit the attractions of Revidge Grit. To complete the picture, what of the sand quarries that were also a feature of the area? These exploited material laid down much more recently: the “drift” left behind at the end of the Ice Age. For a time, there was a meltwater lake in Whittle, sited around the course of the river Lostock, between modern Carrwood Lane and Town Lane and extending into Cuerden Valley Park. The sand left behind when this lake dried up was exploited in quarries near Gorse Hall (off the A674 Chorley-Blackburn road) and Clayton Hall (west of Cuerden Valley Park).

Conclusion: The Quarries Today

Writing about the quarries helps me recall the dull thuds of detonations and the frequent thundering of lorries that used to be a feature of living in Whittle. But quarries are finite resources and virtually all are now closed down. Hoghton quarry is abandoned. Hough Hill and Denham quarries (combined into Denham Hill quarry) is now a local amenity for walkers and rock climbers. St Helens and Hilltop quarries are bisected by the M61 motorway and their remaining faces (on either side of the motorway off Birchin Lane) are increasingly obscured by shrubs and trees. Little quarry has been smoothed over and awaits future exploitation. There were once plans to build a dry ski slope on its face, but it is now, inevitably, earmarked for housing (equally inevitably the plans are being vigorously opposed by local residents). The massive hole of Whittle Hill quarry is still, just, being used for aggregate extraction. It is a spectacular sight, with its sheer faces and still pond, but dangerous; a young boy was drowned in the pond a few years ago. Its future is uncertain. The sand quarries are also no more and are used for landfill. Times change and local people now earn their livings in very different ways. I’m tempted to say that come what may, in the future the rocks will remain - but one day, even they will crumble away!

The remains of the long-abandoned St Helen’s quarry, now tucked into the embankment of the M61 motorway, north of Birchin Lane, is almost completely hidden by the growth of woodland

Little quarry today; cleared, partially filled in and awaiting development as a housing estate.

Sources Used

Open University course S260 Introduction to Geology.

Articles from The Chorley Guardian 1872 - 1883, available at The British Newspaper Archive

Census returns available at UK Census Online: 

Tithe maps available at Lancashire Archive, Preston.

Historic Ordnance Survey maps available at Old Maps

Hodgkinson K (1991) Whittle & Clayton-le-Woods: A Pictorial Record of Bygone Days. Chorley: CKD Publications.

Price D et al (1978) Geology of the country around Preston. Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, Sheet 75.

Whittle-le-Woods Community Hall (2006) Whittle Walks: Exploring the heritage of Whittle-le-Woods, Lancashire.

Winchester A (2006) England’s Landscape: The North West. London: Collins (English Heritage).