Description and History of Site:-
A quarry hole cut into Tan Hill Grit beds for dimension stone and roofing flags, with working faces up to 8m high. The quarry formerly had a tramway running its full length with flatbed carts hand pushed along it. By the 1930s-40s it was essentially worked by just one man. There are many abandoned dimension stone blocks lying about, many with clear tooling marks.
In its latter days (and possibly earlier) most of the stone was carted across the Pennine watershed to the Kirkby Stephen area as well as within the dale itself, mainly for building and walling stone and paving flags. Of its early history nothing has been found but it was operated by the company that worked the nearby Lane End lead mine. When this was closed down in the 1860s it was taken on by Thomas Metcalfe and later by his sons. It was given up in the late 1940s but stone has been spasmodically taken from there more recently for specific building jobs.

Further Reading and References:-
M. Hartley and J. Ingilby. 1996. A Dales heritage. Otley: Smith Settle, pp. 151-53.
D. Johnson. 2016. Quarrying in the Yorkshire Pennines. Stroud: A mberley, p. 40.

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Key Words :- flagstone quarry dimension stone disused

Viewing the Site :- Open Access

Address :- Keld, Muker, North Yorkshire
Grid Ref :- NY 857 018
Co-ordinates :- Lat 54.411448 , Long -2.221835
Local Authority :- Richmondshire District Council
Pre 1974 County :- Yorkshire - North Riding
Site Status :- Site extant - Protected status unknown
Site Condition :- Site disused - but otherwise substantially intact
Site Dates :- unknown - late 1940s
Record Date :- 22 November 2016

Copyright :- cc-by-nc-sa 4.0 © David Johnson