4a. Quarrying: What comes out of Shropshire's quarries?
Road Stone
To be of use, road stone (chippings), must be hard wearing so therefore the main quarry activities take place where the older, harder rocks are found. They are found in places such as the Oswestry area (Lynclys), the Clee Hill area and the Shrewsbury area (Bayston Hill, Haughmond and Condover). At Lynclys the stone is a type of limestone and, as well as road stone, agricultural magnesium lime is produced there.
Building Stone
Building stone needs to be hard wearing and look good. The New Red Sandstones of the northern part of Shropshire around Grinshill and Myddle are the most abundant and some of the most easily obtained. The quarry at Grinshill has been worked for two thousand years, and provides a cream coloured stone that has been incorporated into many of the County's showpiece buildings. These include Roman arches at Uriconium (Wroxeter), the medieval Moreton Corbet castle, as well as the Railway Station and the Welsh and English Bridges in Shrewsbury. Its sister quarry at Myddle provides a richer red sandstone which is often used to highlight a building façade.
Limestone
Limestone can be put to a variety of uses. An important one is as an agricultural chemical used to counteract acid soils. The Llynclys quarry is one of the chief producers in the area, quarrying the carboniferous beds around Oswestry. Another use for limestone is as a flux in the production of iron, which was most important in the establishment of the Ironbridge industrial community. Some limestones are also hard enough to be used as road stone and these are quarried mainly at Wenlock Edge as well as the Llynclys dolomite beds.
Sand and Gravel
Often thought of as the poor relation of quarrying, sand and gravel are in fact some of the most important minerals to industry. Without them there would be no concrete and consequently very little in the way of modern building construction. Shropshire is particularly well blessed with deposits, mainly covering the north and east of the county. There are significant deposits at Ellesmere, Tern Hill and Condover.
Brick Clay
This is a material that must have just the right consistency to be suitable for brick making. Fortunately, there are deposits that exactly match the requirements of the brick and pottery industry in the Broseley area of Telford and at Eardington, near Bridgnorth.
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