Description and History of Site:-
It is a long and rather narrow quarry with a single-bench working face along its northern edge. All infrastructure was demolished in 1994 and removed after the site closed and all has been landscaped and much of the waste heaps has been reseeded. It began, possibly in the mid to late 18th century as a small quarry, called Thornybank Quarry, at the west end of the later Redmire Quarry where the ruins of an 18th-century lime kiln can be seen from the road in a grassed bank. This was originally a common township quarry for Redmire but at the end of the 19th century Stringer Calvert took on the lease and expanded the quarry eastwards producing stone on a more commercial scale. In 1919, trading as Redmire Quarry Co. Ltd., he had an aerial ropeway erected to take crushed stone down to the railway sidings at Redmire, initially transporting 140 tons per day in buckets. In 1929, having suffered badly during the Great Depression, he was bought out by Dorman Long Ltd of Middlesborough which wanted the stone as flux for its iron and steel plant: they traded here as the Redmire (Wensleydale) Limestone Quarry Co. Ltd. Further recession led to the quarry being mothballed in 1938 but it resumed working at which point work to replace the eleven wooden ropeway standards with steel ones was completed thereby increasing its capacity by 40 per cent. In 1948 and 1954 DL Ltd were granted further planning consents to push the quarry east and north, and output gradually increased in scale. In 1957 stone getting was mechanised, in 1962 the ropeway was decommissioned and replaced by road transport down to the sidings. DL was subsumed within British Steel and from 1971 the quarry was worked as a joint venture between BS and Tarmac, with the latter doing the actual quarrying, but using the trading name East Coast Slag Products. Eventually BS pulled out leaving it to Tarmac to own and run, and they joined this quarry with the adjacent Wensley Quarry as a joint operation. At the end of 1992 Redmire was closed down mainly because its main customer, Ravenscraig steelworks was by then using stone from the company's own quarry at Shap, with direct rail access.

Further Reading and References:-
D. Johnson. 2010. 'Limestone industries of the Yorkshire Dales'. Stroud: Amberley, pp. 86, 197, 201, 203-05, 207, 213, 220, 235, 238.
D. Johnson. 2016. 'Quarrying in the Yorkshire Pennines. An illustrated history'. Stroud: Amberley, p. 30, 71, 73, 75, 90.

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Key Words :- disused limestone quarry

Viewing the Site :- Visible from adjacent road and from Open access land surrounding the quarry to the north-east

Address :- Hargill Lane, Redmire, Leyburn, North Yorkshire
Grid Ref :- SE 047 928
Co-ordinates :- Lat 54.330748 , Long -1.929231
Local Authority :- Richmondshire District Council
Pre 1974 County :- Yorkshire - North Riding
Site Status :- Site extant - Protected status unknown
Site Condition :- Site cleared - no above ground remains visible
Site Dates :- unknown - 1992
Record Date :- 3 January 2018

Copyright :- cc-by-nc-sa 4.0 © David Johnson