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Stone traffic...by underground passage??


dave moore

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In the early 70s I taught at Springfield, a Black Country village between Dudley and Rowley Regis. The school stood on Doulton Road, the Dudley No 2 canal crossed lower down. Behind, in the Rowley Hills were quarries which produced “ Rowley Rag”, a stone used in road surfacing. Some of this was certainly delivered by boat. 

Ive just seen a Facebook post from one of my former pupils from those times. Her sister used to work for the quarry operators, Tarmac in later years, who said that an underground passage existed from the quarry to the canal to facilitate loading. This is a new one to me, I’d have thought it a prohibitively expensive option given the gradient from quarry to canal - do any of you have any knowledge of this? There is a largish basin on the offside of the Dudley No 2, just after the junction, in what is now Warrens Hall Park. Was this the loading point? I promised Fay I’d feed back with any hard information. Over to you.....

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  • 3 weeks later...

There were tunnels that linked quarries by internal tramway, but the underground passage to the canal, I do not believe is correct. However the tramways did exist.

 

Doulton operated the Springfield  Fireclay Quarries that used 2ft gauge locomotives  between 1922 and 1955.

Jones and Fitzmaurice built a narrow gauge double track rope worked incline from the Hailstone Quarry at Rowley Regis to Springfield Basin beside the Dudley no 2 canal, in 1880. their system was later acquired by the Rowley Regis Granite Co Ltd. 

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