Beer Quarry Caves | |
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![]() The interior of Beer Stone Quarry | |
Location | Beer, Devon, UK |
Geology | Limestone |
Difficulty | Easy |
Access | Public tourist attraction |
Beer Quarry Caves is a man-made limestone underground complex located about a mile west of the village of Beer, Devon, [1] and the main source in England for Beer stone. The tunnels resulted from 2,000 years of quarrying Beer stone, which was particularly favoured for cathedral and church features such as door and window surrounds because of its colour and workability for carving. Stone from the quarry was used in the construction of several of southern England's ancient cathedrals and a number of other important buildings as well as for many town and village churches, [2] and for some buildings in the United States. Extraction was particularly intense during the Middle Ages, but continued until the 1920s. An adit to another set of workings can be seen from the South West Coast Path east of Branscombe, having been exposed by a landslip in the late 18th century. The quarry is part of the Jurassic Coast, [3] and is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).
Beer stone is a creamy-grey, fine-textured limestone [4] from the Middle Cretaceous period [2] that takes its name from the town of Beer, where it was quarried and mined from Roman times. The layer of the best stone (lowest number of flints) is about thirty feet thick. [5] It is also found in other places in south-west England. Because of its fine grain, it is a "Free stone", which means that it can be sawed or squared up in any direction: the crystal structure does not restrict the directions in which it can be worked. When first mined, it is relatively soft and easily cut, but it hardens with exposure to the air, and becomes about as hard as Portland stone. [6]
The earliest workings at the quarry were in the Roman period initially in open quarries, after which it was necessary to quarry into the side of the hill because of other rock strata above. [4] At this time the estuary of the River Axe provided a safe harbour for the removal of the stone by boat. The Roman section is typified by large arches which support the roof and was hand excavated using picks and wooden wedges. Beer stone was used in the Roman villa of Honeyditches, Seaton. [7]
The Norman workings join directly onto the earlier Roman quarry, working deeper into the hillside, and are typified by large rectangular columns which support the roof and includes several smaller side galleries.
Quarry men worked long hours by candlelight with hand tools such as picks and saws. The quarrymen were also often supported by child labour. Skilled stonemasons would then work on the stone in the caves because it became harder to carve when exposed to the air. The stone blocks would then be lifted by hand-operated cranes after the connection of Lewis lifting devices to be loaded onto horse-drawn wagons. They would then usually be taken to barges which would sail from Beer Beach. [8] [9] After 1540, stone was only quarried for secular building.
After the Reformation, one of the uses of the caves was as a secret Catholic church. In the 19th century, the caves were also used to store contraband, including by the smuggler Jack Rattenbury. [10]
Quarrying at the site ceased in the early 20th century when a new quarry was opened nearby. Some caves were then used to cultivate mushrooms and others were used to dump waste from the new quarry. Guided tours of the caves are now run from spring to autumn. [11] The caves provide a haven for hibernating bats in winter. The presence of the bats, along with the opportunities to see the geological profiles that quarry faces allow, caused the old and new quarries to be declared a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The very rare Bechstein's bat and the greater and lesser horseshoe bats along with five other bat species are all found in the caves. [12]
The River Axe is a 22-mile (35 km) long river in the counties of Dorset, Somerset and Devon, in the south-west of England. It rises in Dorset and flows south to Lyme Bay which it enters through the Axe Estuary in Devon. It is a shallow, non-navigable river, although its mouth at Seaton has some boating activity. The name Axe derives from a Common Brittonic word meaning "abounding in fish", and is cognate with pysg, the Welsh word for fish.
The Isle of Purbeck is a peninsula in Dorset, England. It is bordered by water on three sides: the English Channel to the south and east, where steep cliffs fall to the sea; and by the marshy lands of the River Frome and Poole Harbour to the north. Its western boundary is less well defined, with some medieval sources placing it at Flower's Barrow above Worbarrow Bay. John Hutchins, author of The History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset, defined Purbeck's western boundary as the Luckford Lake stream, which runs south from the Frome. According to writer and broadcaster Ralph Wightman, Purbeck "is only an island if you accept the barren heaths between Arish Mell and Wareham as cutting off this corner of Dorset as effectively as the sea." The most southerly point is St Alban's Head.
Seaton is a seaside town, fishing harbour and civil parish in East Devon on the south coast of England, between Axmouth and Beer. It faces onto Lyme Bay and is on the Jurassic Coast, a World Heritage Site. A sea wall provides access to the mostly shingle beach stretching for about a mile, and a small harbour on the River Axe estuary.
Beer is a seaside village and civil parish in the East Devon district of Devon, England. The village faces Lyme Bay and is a little over 1 mile (1.6 km) west of the town of Seaton. It is situated on the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site and its picturesque cliffs, including Beer Head, form part of the South West Coast Path.
Porthleven is a town, civil parish and fishing port near Helston, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The most southerly port in Great Britain, it was a harbour of refuge when this part of the Cornish coastline was infamous for wrecks in the days of sail. The South West Coast Path from Somerset to Dorset passes through the town. The population at the 2011 census was 3,059.
Mining in Cornwall and Devon, in the southwest of Britain, is thought to have begun in the early-middle Bronze Age with the exploitation of cassiterite. Tin, and later copper, were the most commonly extracted metals. Some tin mining continued long after the mining of other metals had become unprofitable, but ended in the late 20th century. In 2021, it was announced that a new mine was extracting battery-grade lithium carbonate, more than 20 years after the closure of the last South Crofty tin mine in Cornwall in 1998.
Browne's Folly, or Brown's Folly, is a folly tower sitting within a 39.9 hectare biological and geological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) near the English village of Bathford in Somerset, notified in 1974: the site itself is known as the Farleigh Down Stone Quarry and is managed as a nature reserve by the Avon Wildlife Trust (AWT). The tower was built in 1848 and is a Grade II listed building.
Combe Down and Bathampton Down Quarries make up a 6.22 hectare Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Bath and North East Somerset, England, important for its bat population. The disused quarries date from the 17th and 18th centuries and were the source of Bath stone for the city of Bath and elsewhere in the UK. A five-year project to stabilise the quarry workings was largely completed by November 2009.
Chilmark Quarries is a 9.65 hectare biological and geological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), in the ravine south of the village of Chilmark in Wiltshire, England.
Totternhoe Stone is a relatively hard chalk outcropping in the middle of the Lower Chalk in the Chiltern Hills in Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire, England. Geologically, it is located in the upper part of the Cenomanian stage of the Cretaceous.
Lezant is a civil parish and village in east Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. Lezant village is about five miles south of Launceston. The population of the parish in the 2001 census was 751, increasing slightly to 765 in the 2011 census.
Chicksgrove Quarry is a 14 acres (5.7 ha) geological Site of Special Scientific Interest south of Upper Chicksgrove in Wiltshire, England notified in 1971.
Jack Rattenbury, nicknamed Rob Roy of the West, was an English smuggler. In 1837, after thirty years at sea as a fisherman, pilot, seaman and smuggler, he wrote about his life in a book called Memoirs of a Smuggler with the help of a local Unitarian clergyman.
Mulberry Downs Quarry is a disused opencast tin mine in Cornwall, England, UK. Today the site is described as a 'chasm' being a steep or sheer-sided pit 700 foot (210 m) long and up to 100 foot (30 m) deep, and the quarry and immediate surroundings are heavily wooded. The quarry was designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in 1973 for its geological interest.
Old Bow And Old Ham Mines is a 40.3-hectare (100-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Gloucestershire, notified in 1998.
The Upper Greensand Formation is a Cretaceous formation of Albian to Cenomanian in age, found within the Wessex Basin and parts of the Weald Basin in southern England. It overlies the Gault Clay and underlies the Chalk Group. It varies in thickness from zero to 75 m. It is predominantly a glauconitic fine-grained sandstone, locally becoming silty. Fragmentary dinosaur remains, such as those assigned to Iuticosaurus, have been recovered from this formation. It has been quarried as a building stone from Roman times, and used in London and the area of its outcrop from Devon to East Sussex.
Reigate Stone is a freestone that was mined from the Upper Greensand in north east Surrey. It was used in building work throughout the Middle Ages and early modern period. It is sometimes classified as a calcareous sandstone, although very little of the silica content is in the form of detrital sand grains. In addition to silicon dioxide, the stone also includes clay, fine-grained calcite, mica flakes and glauconite.