Go to the Main Mendip Cave Registry Search Page

Longsplatt Quarry

Longsplatt, Kingsdown.

The surface features of the quarry are now landscaped. There was an air shaft, which is now built over at 'The Quarry Edge' and a 45-degree slope shaft with steps. This inclined shaft, in the back garden of 'The Old Quarry' residential property, is also backfilled. The Darkplaces group worked at reopening the slope shaft in 2007 and exposed the old arched entrance before access was lost.

Alternative Names: Longs Platt Slope Shaft, Long Platts Slope Shaft

Notes: The quarry's name contains the term 'platt', or more properly 'splatt' indicating an irregular plot of land, a term that has now completely dropped from our modern vocabulary.

The quarry was opened as an open-cast working by the Northey Stone Company Ltd., in 1890. The slope shaft was later added that allowed the extraction of Bath stone from underground and the quarry then employed four underground quarrymen with another twelve men working in the surface stone yard. Maps, photographs and drawings show this stone yard as substantial in size with stone-built stables, offices and a horse-gin to pull the extracted stone to the surface.

In 1897, the quarry was leased to the United Stone Firms Ltd. run by James and William Turner from Cardiff. However, ten years later in 1907, the viable stone reserves were worked out and the enterprise closed in 1920. The surface area was then made fully residential.

underground quarrymen and twelve men working on the surface in the stone yard. Cardiff, who called themselves the United Stone Firms Ltd. By 1907 it wasn't producing enough stone, which had to be bought in and it was worked out within 20 years and went into liquidation in 1913.