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Home » Industry » Mining and quarrying (other) » Quarries (other)

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Aerial photograph of old cement and limeworks at Aberthaw, 1995
  • Limestone forms a thin belt all around the coal measures of south Wales and is particularly prevalent in the Swansea area. There were more than 30 limestone quarries on Cribarth Mountain (worked from the 1790s until the 1890s) and the remains are still visible on and around the mountain top. The main period of activity coincided with the boom in the local anthracite iron industry (1837-c.1860) and these quarries (together with their associated railways and tramroads) are the main memorial to the frenetic activity of that period. Silica sand for furnace linings was also worked in quarries around the mountain top, as was rottenstone, the impure limestone shale used in polishing copper and tinplate. Source: Stephen Hughes and Paul Reynolds, 'Industrial Archaeology of the Swansea Region' (Association for Industrial Archaeology, 1992 edn), p. 9
Aerial photograph of Cribarth Limestone Quarries, Abercraf, 1988
  • Limestone forms a thin belt all around the coal measures of south Wales and many small limekilns, intended to supply a purely local need for lime for agricultural purposes, can be found throughout the area. No less than 171 of these limekilns stand in and around a walled enclosure (some one square kilometer in extent) on Carnau Gwynion, some of which are shown in this aerial photograph. There are several such concentrations of kilns on the southern edge of the Great Forest of Brecon to which the commoners came from local farms to burn lime on the limestone outcrop itself. Many of the kilns date from before the enclosure of the Forest in 1819 and nearly all of them were very crudely constructed of unmortared limestone blocks. The remains are now ruinous, most of the kilns probably having fallen into disuse during the early part of the twentieth century. Source: Stephen Hughes and Paul Reynolds, 'Industrial Archaeology of the Swansea Region' (Association for Industrial Archaeology, 1992 edn), p. 9
Aerial photograph of Carnau Gwynion Limekilns, Ystradfellte, 1990
Aerial photograph of Gilwern Hill Quarry, Clydach, Breconshire, 1992
Aerial photograph of Gilwern Hill North Quarry, Clydach, Breconshire, 1990
Aerial photograph of Pwll Du Limestone Quarries, Blaenavon, 1999