Welsh Journals

LIMESTONE QUARRYING IN NORTH-EASTWALES BEFORE 1900 THE quarrying of limestone is a major extractive industry today, mainly for the production of aggregates for a wide range of activities. Areas such as north-east Wales, Derbyshire, south Wales and the Mendips are dominated by large quarries which have a dramatic visual and environmental impact. There has been much expansion in the period since 1960 as large-scale construction and road-building programmes have been implemented.1 Limestone has been quarried ever since it was discovered to be an easily obtainable building material, and this is particularly so in north- east Wales, with outcrops within easy reach of most communities.2 Later, processes were developed of converting limestone into lime for use as a mortar and then for the improvement of agricultural land. From the eighteenth century onwards, new uses were found for limestone, in the iron and, later, the chemical industries. Trans- portation of such a heavy and bulky product was always a problem, but certain areas, such as part of the north-east Wales coast where the limestone outcrops to the sea, had natural advantages. In other locations it was exploited as canals and railways were built. An extrapolation of the mineral statistics for 1858, though not comprehensive in that figures were not given for all quarries, indicates an annual production of limestone in north-east Wales of approximately 300,000 tons, compared with 700,000 tons in the whole of Wales and a similar figure in northern England. In 1980 production in north-east Wales alone was 6,700,000 tons!3 1 I am indebted to C. J. Williams, county archivist of Clwyd, for guiding me to this area of research and for his advice in the preparation of this article. 2 E. Hubbard, The Buildings of Wales: Clwyd (Harmondsworth, 1986), pp. 90-4. 3 R. Hunt, Mineral Statistics of the United Kingdom (London, 1860), pp. 262-7; Mineral Wbrking in Clwyd (Mold, 1982), p. 29.