On Saturday 24th January Mike Install and I visited Mr John Lane of JW Lane Stanford Bridge, in order to learn more about the history of quarrying in the Teme Valley, especially tufa.

Mr Lane has taken an active interest in the history of the valley for many years and his company has been involved with many schemes involving excavations, drainage and so on that gave him ample opportunity to check out what lies underneath.

First of all he let us inspect the proceedings of the Worcester Geographic Society that contained findings from the valley.  Since the meeting, David Cropp has traced and purchased this document which must surely be only representative of the outpourings of this Society.

JL told us of furnaces in Hell Hole (one of the alarmingly named Teme dingles, others–The Witcheries, Devil’s Den and so on), with flues laid up the steeply sloping ground to gain draught.  Question, from where did iron ore come from–limestone is available and of course charcoal from local woods.  There is a farm with the name Forge Farm that JL said had a rolling mill driven by water delivered by a leat still visible especially when wet, taken from above the weir, the remains of which can be seen below New Mill Bridge.  The Foley’s of Witley Court operated this and further up towards Southstone is Furnace Farm so these two alone bespeak an industrial past.  As I recall the Archaeological Society has papers referring.

JL said that the largest tufa quarry was up behind Shelsley Church and the Court House. Several buildings in the area are wholly or partly made from tufa and altho not a heavy stone, local supplies make sense.  Our investigations proved large deposits in this side valley, much covered up with vegetation now.  Up the hill climb at the esses, where we investigated on 22nd Jan (see post) there is an underground reservoir as well as the open, now much silted pond.  From the reservoir, a 3″ cast iron pipe ran down hill, splitting in two to drive a Pelton wheel for electricity at the Court House and the other branch to feed the pool for Shelsley Water Mill, recently beautifully restored by hill climb wrinklies.  In addition, JL said that he placed the plastic sump that we saw under the small waterfall, and that this fed into the underground reservoir mentioned above.

Interestingly he said, German WW1 prisoners of war erected a small suspension bridge across the Teme I think to access Brockhill Court and this also carried a water supply pipe.  The whole affair suffered badly whenever the Teme flooded.

In the old days all houses in the valley were fed with water from local streams.

At Southstone he says there is evidence of quarrying–saw marks where blocks were cut but he says Southstone was not a major quarrying site.  There was a hydraulic ram at the back of Southstone, used to supply water locally and he says he has a picture of the house on top of the rock (now gone) with its well tended garden.

There is a large tufa quarry, well worked, at Eastham and gave the address of the owner.

JL did not show us any documents other than the one above, but am sure he has a whole library somewhere.  He made the statement that there is coal in Pouk Lane–this needs to be checked and he gave us locations for three quarries, suspected as sources of a widely used building stone, St Maughans Old Red Sandstone and we will check these out.  He also said there is coal on Woodbury and that the quarry at the corner of Fetterlocks Lane (now owned by Worcestershire Wildlife) ceased in 37/38.