Portland Stone - page 2
During Tudor times, frequent attacks from the French and Spanish necessitated the need to protect Portland's great natural harbour. Therefore, Henry VIII built two fortresses in 1539, Portland Castle and Sandsfoot Castle. Unfortunately, Sandsfoot Castle has long been in ruins due to sea erosion of the sandcliffs but Portland Castle survives, and is a bustling tourist attraction. During the First World War this coastal fortress was a seaplane station and during the Second World War it was at the forefront of the massive preparations to recapture Europe, - D-day. It is made from the finest Portland stone to be found, Ashlar stone, and is considered the best preserved of Henry VIII's Castles.
Perryfield Quarry
In 1838 it was recorded that there were around 100 quarries, of which the Crown held and worked about a fourth. The rest were shared between some half dozen proprietors, who paid a nominal rent per acre, and a real rent of 2 shillings per ton of every stone raised and shipped. Up to a thousand Portlanders were employed in the quarries, and would extract the stone in gangs of up to six men and two boys who were paid 10 shillings per ton of stone. Their average day was extremely strenuous, worsened by the cold weather, chapped hands, and boots made doubly heavy with the clay. The best stone, the Whitbed, lay many feet down beneath the strata and quarrymen were expected to clear each layer before reaching the good stone free of charge! First, they would remove the 7 feet deep surface soil, which was transported and thrown over the fallow fields in the neighbourhood. Next came the Turf layer, three tiers of grit reaching 16 feet deep. The stubbornness of its structure and its weight made it a work of serious labour. Using wedges, the solid stratum was reduced into manageable lumps, which were then carried by horse and cart and often thrown over the cliffs into the sea. The Roach stone was the next stratum and totalled 9 feet in depth. This was a very hard layer that had to be blasted with the aid of explosives and it was a long enduring struggle to accomplish its removal. If that didn't seem like enough hard work, beneath the Roach stratum lay various beds of clay, marl and flint, which also had to be removed before a single foot of the good stone was in sight. That's a total of 32 feet of stone and earth that had to be removed and cleared away before the quarrymen could earn a single shilling on the useable stone! On top of that, they were also obliged to pay for the sharpening of their "kivels" (an axe-like sledge) and other tools, and the blasting which was also expensive. Once the flooring of good Portland stone was revealed, the blocks were squared with the use of their kivels, weighed, and branded with the owner's mark, which was incised on the face of the block. The stone was then transported to the loading jetties by horses and specially designed low trolleys. When the railway arrived in Portland in 1902, quarries on the west of Portland could transport stone to the station, and the train would then lower the stone down the inclines of the hill to a jetty near to the mainland. A carriage would then charge 8d per ton for the best building stone and half that price for Roach and other inferior stone.
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Last updated:
23 October, 2008