Quarry Hill?

[cnosni]

The Parksider wrote: cnosni wrote: The Parksider wrote: blackprince wrote: Anyone know which quarry quarry the hill gets its name from? For me you should not class Quarry Hill as the 1930's built flatsThe old Quarry Hill road took the line of the current flyover from Burmantofts down into Leeds. The land north of that and Mabgate rises steeply especially around St. Mary's Church area. That's more of a Hill, and easily could have been the Quarry area.The old flats are more on St. Peters square. Yeah id go with that,especially as St Marys was known as St MArys Quarry Hill. That's interesting!If you were to strip away all the development and look at the lie of the land on that Hill then north up the Valley that Lady, Carr and Gipton Beck run in, the same hillside north of Quarry Hill that St. Mary's stands on has been extensively quarried although mainly for fireclay along Roseville road. If you travelled east up the old road quarry Hill you will come to excavations at Burmantofts for the pottery and the brickworks respectively that dig deep down into that hill.So leaving the flat area of St.Peters square aside and taking as you say St Mary's as the actual quarry Hill, then the geology contains sandstone, fireclay, coal and possibly ironstone, and in more modern times it has been mined and quarried albeit further out of leeds than St. Mary's.My problem (and I haven't the time to research it) is acess to pre-ordanance survey maps where the older mines and quarries may show up (then again may not as older maps are often devoid of many features). However one can guess that before the victorians expanded Leeds north and east into Quarry Hill, that area on the hill may have been convenient ground for early extractive industries. I do not know the exact date of the original brick housing of St. Peters square (I have lost my Beresford Book), but if it was early Victorian or even Georgian, they needed their fireclay from somewhere to make the bricks (which would have been in the open air in a "brick field".My guess may be that they dug into quarry hill for fireclay and some stone, made the bricks there, and carried them down to create the famous old slums in the St. Peters area below the hill.Interestingly, if you go to an east yorkshire village it's mainly all brick. If you go to a pennine village it's all stone. Local materials rule OK.The "building material line" runs smack through Leeds. In the west of the city moving toward the pennines our old villages are of stone from lots of easy to trace quarries, East of the city our old buildings were all brick (Dial House, Temple Newsam etc). Quarry in Horsforth means stone, quarry in east leeds means fireclay?Theory all subject to Grumpytramps approval...... Quarrying must have predated Georgian and Victorian as there are references to "Quarry/Quarrel Hill in the parish registers for Leeds in the early 17th century

[grumpytramp]

The Parksider wrote: Theory all subject to Grumpytramps approval...... Parkie ......... you're begining to get the knack of this!I have attached a copy of a 1775 plan purloined from an unofficial source (which may be obvious to those keeping up with local planning matters ).Quarry Hill at this time is clearly identified as an area at the bottom of Lady Lane on the east bank of Sheepscar Beck; pretty much where I would have expected to see it.If you take a look at the 1854 First series 1:10560 OS plan of the area, which convientiantly has a lot of geological information here:http://www.british-history.ac.uk/mapshe ... &y=269Have a scoot around, and you will notice that the Black Bed and Better Bed coals outcrops are shown a good distance to the east of Sheepscar Beck(in the general area of Burmantofts where the Better Bed fireclays were extracted). This is important, as it would indicate that the underlaying strata in the area of Quarry Hill is likely to be the Elland Flags (a composite band of sandstone, shales and siltstones typically 200' thick). The main bands of sandstone have been extensively quarried in Leeds (probably in Leeds most notably in the Scott Hall Quarries in Chapel Allerton and in Gipton Woods). The Elland Flags were historically an important source of building stone throughout West Yorkshire.Mere supposition but I expect that local building stone quarries exploited the Elland Flags which were exposed in the valleysides of Sheepscar Beck prior to the 19th Century eastward expansion of the city, and perhpas provided the local name. I expect that those quarries would have been lost amidst the rapid expansion of the city?