Mancetter Quarry online exhibition
An online exhibition detailing the history of quarrying in Mancetter has gone live with pictures showing when the quarry was used a test racetrack and was home to the likes of the Jaguar D-Type, the Triumph TR3 and the MGA.
Warwickshire County Council’s website has two current exhibitions; one details the quarrying history of Mancetter, the other looks at the many finds that archaeologists have found in Bidford on Avon.
Pictures that have been provided courtesy of Tarmac Limited show various quarrying procedures including the blasting process, drilling, sorting and crushing of rock. The photographs also illustrate the machinery used during the early days of the quarry being operated and compare it to the contemporary equivalents.
Mancetter quarry is rich in Diorite, a high quality granite-like stone. Blasting this using the rather primitive methods of the first part of the 20th century was a potentially risky affair with one of the exhibition’s photos showing a 2 tonne chunk of stone perched on top of a quarry having been blown 40metres into the air by the force of the blast. Modern blasting methods, however, are a very different and safer affair.
Being rich in Diorite which is ideal for racetracks, the quarry was ideally suited for the purposes of testing cars in the 1950s. A series of photographs illustrate the top sports cars of the era using the quarry to test their performance.
Attracting these cars was quite a coup for Mancetter and was put down to its high quality stone. The fact that one of the quarry’s major shareholders also ran Silverstone’s racetrack was also a factor.
The two steam engines, Jubilee and Oldbury, named after the quarries where they worked are also featured in a section on the types of machinery used at the quarry over the years.
Christina Evans, archaeological project manager with Warwickshire County Council who works at the Historic Environment Record (HER), said: “Quarrying has been at the heart of the local economy affected many local people’s lives. The industry has changed immensely over the last 60 or 70 years and the exhibition illustrates this.
"We are very grateful to Tarmac for letting us use these priceless images and helping us to preserve this integral piece of local heritage.”
The online exhibitions have been created as part of Warwickshire Museum Field Service’s project ‘Extracting Warwickshire’s Past’ and is available by following the link below.
The photographs and information from the exhibition will be mounted on panels and touring local libraries in the coming months.