The coal merchant's yard

The weather has certainly become more wintry and threatens to stay that way for the near future.  I emptied the coal bunker last week and cleaned out all the coal dust lying at the bottom.  I had hoped to order a delivery but decide we needed to get some more coal in today to last the weekend, as it is much snugger on these long cold evening with a roaring fire.

The coal merchant is a family business and is situated in this yard in an old limestone quarry, which originally was for building stone, but eventually became at he source of the raw material for a lime kiln business.  Mr Webb the elder has previously told me about the history of this quarry and he remembers when his family still ran it as a lime kiln.

The family owns the adjacent woodlands on the very steep hillsides to the left and out of my picture, which provided the fuel for the lime process.  When he was young, in the 1950s I think, they employed a traveller who brought his family in their van and parked it in the old part of the quarry.  He would mine the limestone from tunnels going deep into the quarry face which you can see the remains of on the right of the picture.  The tunnels though closed up are still there.

Eventually the lime business ended and they moved into the supply of fuel, both firewood and coal, which they continue till this day.  The coal originally was brought here on the Stroudwater canal, with barges coming from the Midlands down through Worcester and Gloucester on the navigable River Severn, and then along the Sharpness canal before branching up to Stroud.  Eventually the coming of the railway brought the demise of the local canal and now it all comes by road.

I took this view just at dusk to show the coalyard's position where the upper limestone strata outcrops and the track that follows its line.  Below there are alternating strata of clays and further limestone and there is another quarry about 150 feet below this one with another track also running along the hillside back into the town.  Our house lies about another fifty feet lower again, but is only about two hundred yards from the coalyard as the crow flies, but is at least a mile by road.

Its now time to light the fire, and do the jigsaw again.