Go to the Main Mendip Cave Registry Search Page

Kelks Quarry Shaft

Combe Down, Bath.

This vertical shaft recorded by Willies et al (2011) as the main winding shaft for Kelks / Turnpike Quarry, although it was inaccessible underground due to previous infilling by the stabilisation programme.

The shaft head may still be accessible in the garden of 1836 Bradford Road.

Alternative Names: Turnpike Quarry

Notes: The Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette published a report on 6 May 1869, detailing an accident the previous day, in what was probably this shaft. William Pocock was lifting a stone of 5 tons weight, by means of a crane, "when the "dog" of the crane slipped, and the poor fellow was raised to the roof of the quarry with great violence, causing a tremendous gash in his forehead, and breaking both his legs and one of his arms." His broken limbs were set, the gash in the forehead was sewn up, before "the poor man was conveyed home where he lies in a very precarious state."

There was also two further series accidents in the quarry; firstly a fatality, James Hillyer, in 1875 reported by the Bath Express and secondly, another fatality, Edward Fido, in 1877, reported in the Central Somerset Gazette.

The shaft is still believed to have been in use by Messrs Randell and Saunders between 1875 and 1885 and it may also have been reused, at a later date, to haul stone to the surface from Tank Field Quarry, to the west.