BROWN CLEE – INDUSTRY

Quarrying on Brown Clee.

Several rock types have been quarried on Brown Clee. These include the Dhustone quarried from about 1906 until about 1936. There are still several signs of this activity including parts of a crushing plant (left).

Limestone was also quarried and small excavations can be found in and around the hill fort at Nordy Bank.

The coal measures have been worked for a long time with some of the earliest excavations taking the form of bell pits which are seen today throughout this area as slight depressions on the slopes.

This picture of a model of a bell-pit shows how they were worked. Men in the pit dug away at the coal as much as they could before the pit collapsed. They would then start another, and so on until the whole area was dotted with these pits. It is the depressions caused by the collapsed pits that we see today.

As well as coal they also extracted tar from the hillside. This came from the same sort of level as the coal but was sticky rather than being a solid.

This picture shows the top of a tar pit on Brown Clee.

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