The White Flint Legacy of Castleton

At the crest of an old tramway incline from the former silica quarries, once the workings of the Sheffield-based firm J. Grayson Lowood & Co. Ltd., one gazes across the Esk valley.1NYMNPA HER Records (Monuments) No: 7219 Stone quarries north of Casleton village2Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough – 07 September 1908 https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000159/19080907/054/0003?noTouch=true Just off-centre in the distance lies the looming hump of Castleton Rigg, climbing to the highest point of the ā€œFat Moors.ā€ The village of Castleton itself clings to the far left of the scene, as though in quiet contemplation. I recall sharing a view from High Castleton in this very direction some three years ago. How swiftly time scurries away, like the many rabbits I saw today dashing through the heather. This description, I confess, is but a reworking of that previous post.

Behind me sprawls the forsaken quarry, a grand and desolate expanse of derelict workings, now home to ponds, crags, and the many re-entrants and spurs; and rabbits. These quarries first stirred into life in 1881 and slumbered into silence in the 1970s, though sandstone for building was once hewed from lower down this hillside in post-medieval times.3NYMNPA HER Records No: 5160 An area of post medieval stone quarrying named Watson’s Quarry on historic mapping.

The object of this industry was the silica-rich Moor Grit, or as Elgee rather poetically named it, White Flint.4Elgee, Frank. ā€œThe Moorlands of North Eastern Yorkshireā€. London 1912 Unlike the usual moorland sandstones, this rockā€™s quartz grains are firmly cemented with silica rather than the more common iron oxides. This gave it a peculiar ganister-like quality, ideal for grinding into refractory bricks and foundry moulding sand.

The quarried stone was carefully lowered down a series of self-acting inclines to a crushing plant nestled in the valley below, conveniently situated near the North Eastern Railway. This particular incline, if Iā€™m understanding it correctly, dates back to 1919.


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