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Springfield Quarry

South Stoke Down, Bath.

This was once the largest open and underground quarry in Bath. Springfield Quarry reached peak extraction between about 1750 and 1900 and it is suggested that approximately 2·5 million cubic feet (160,000 tons) of stone were extracted.

The quarry is now partially covered by housing to the north and a public park to the south of the old surface quarry. The old quarry walls are designated as a RIGS. These are Regionally Important Geological and Geomorphological Sites - locally designated sites chosen to protect significant geological, geomorphological, and soil features.

The adit entrance on the eastern side of the quarry is now blocked by concrete blocks. It is thought that this working headed to the south of an adjacent quarry.

Alternative Names: None recorded.

Notes: It is thought that Springfield Quarry may have been worked as early as the Norman period, but this without any conclusive evidence with the stone being used in medieval and/or Norman Bath. Thomas Thorpe's map of "An actual survey of the City of Bath in the County of Somerset, and of five miles round" published in 1742 does not show Sprinfield Quarry but both Springfield and Entry Hill quarries are shown on the Charlton Map of Lyncombe and Widecombe, published in 1799. The quarry is also clearly shown on an 1808 Ordnance Survey 1 inch map.

Wooster (1978) writes that Springfield Quarry was last worked by the Armstrongs and that they were possibly the first quarrying company to use petrol driven saws in Bath.