1. A Thousand Years of Building with Stone:
Databases, Crowdsourcing and an Awful Lot
of Sandstone
Elliot Carter
Herefordshire & Worcestershire Earth Heritage Trust

2. Summary
1. Introduction to organisation and
project
2. Case studies of ongoing project work
3. Successes and challenges so far
4. Database/website development
5. (Nearly) Finished Result

3. H&W Earth Heritage Trust
• We are a charity established in 1996
• We promote public awareness of
Earth Heritage
• We run the Geological Records
Centre for Herefordshire &
Worcestershire
• We research, survey and designate
Local Geological Sites and work with
planning departments to protect
them
• We carry out practical site
geoconservation

4. Project Background
• Strategic Stone Survey
• Good overview of stone use in each
county
• However
• Very few connections made between
buildings and quarries
• No community involvement
• No archival research
• This project is aimed at
addressing those limitations
• 1 year development project led
to successful HLF bid

5. A Thousand Years of Building with Stone
• A 3½ year project, funded by the
Heritage Lottery Fund with a grant
of £393,100
• Employs 3 members of staff
• Key Aims
• Re-discover local building stone
quarries
• Research the skills, techniques and
people involved in exploiting this
resource
• Raise awareness and appreciation of
local stone, providing people with a
sense of place
• Create a database linking stone to
quarries and particular buildings

6. Why Building Stones?

7. • Herefordshire & Worcestershire
have some of the most diverse
geology in the UK
• The variety of stone types
available has created many
locally distinctive building styles
• This variety is not always
widely recognised and can be
highly localised
• Better and wider understanding
of this contribute to
appreciation and conservation
of stone built heritage and can
inform sensible planning
decisions
Why Building Stones?

8. Case Studies of Ongoing Work
Worcester Bridge
• Two stages of construction: 1780 and 1930s widening
• Multiple documentary sources, all unclear
• 1780 – Original bridge completed
• Money paid to a Mrs Woolascot for stone from Farnol’s Moor, Salop:
• Quarry Location not known (near Bridgenorth).
• Balustrades said to be from Tixall Quarry near Stafford:
• No primary documentary evidence.
• Insides of piers specified as Ombersley Stone (20 miles upriver):
• Was this carried out? Probably red stone still visible under arches.
• Piers specified as “Best Old Field stone”:
• It is not clear where or what this refers to.
• 1933 – Widening work encases original bridge obscuring much of the stone
• Stone specified as Darley Dale Stone:
• A very close match has been found with stone from Birchover Quarry 2 miles
from Darley Dale.
• Balustrades reportedly re-used:
• Document not clear, but observation of the stone is consistent with this

9. Case Studies of Ongoing Work

10. Case Studies of Ongoing Work
Bromyard Town Centre
• Highly variable local stone types
• Documentary evidence only gives
hints
• A Mr. Phipps, owned quarries on Bromyard
Downs and carried out substantial works on
the parish church 1890-1910.
• Did he use his quarries and which were
they?
• Probably only possible to narrow
down to a range of source quarries
• Local residents have been enormously
helpful in finding samples

11. A single wall in St Peter’s Church, Bromyard…

12. Green sandstones
Sg1 – olive green,
medium to fine
sandstone,
laminated, flaggy,
sometimes orange
iron stained
Sg2 – olive green,
medium to fine
sandstone, generally
massively bedded,
occasionally
laminated, >10cm
beds, sometimes iron
stained or mottled
with greyer patches.
Sb – sandstone
orange-brown to buff,
flaggy, probably co-
exists with green
sandstones along a
spectrum of iron
content.

13. Red & purple sandstones
Sr1 – brick red
sandstone, flaggy,
sometimes laminated,
sometimes blotched
green, rare.
Sr2 – chocolate
brown sandstone,
often laminated occ.
massive, beds
generally >10cm.
Sp – purple to
chocolate brown
sandstone, generally
>5cm, massive
bedded.

14. Calcareous conglomerate
C – conglomerate,
grey-green silty sand
matrix, rounded grey
calcareous clasts
weathering to
buff/yellow.

15. (Very) coarse grey pebbly quartzite
Q – sedimentary
quartzite, coarse with
angular, rounded
pebbles often in
stringers defining
bedding, 5cm normal
grading sequences,
X-beds, grey,
occasionally red,
purple, green or
mottled between
these. Some blocks in
church show
slickensides.

17. Case Studies of Ongoing Work
Mines and Quarries Inspectorate Records
• Volunteer went through annual reports at the National Archives
• Revealed variation in patterns of quarrying between
Herefordshire and Worcestershire

18. Case Studies of Ongoing Work
Worcestershire Herefordshire

19. Case Studies of Ongoing Work
Mines and Quarries
Inspectorate Records
• Start to get a picture of
quarryman’s often
overlooked lives and
stories
• George Phillpotts killed by a
quarry blasting in 1906

20. Successes and Challenges
Differences from classic crowdsourcing/citizen
science projects
• Research is open ended
• Almost limitless places to look
• Only some aspects can be broken down into simple, definable
tasks
• Success in connecting buildings to quarries is often not linked to
effort put in
• Potential to lead to demoralisation
• Difficult to know where to start
• Some tasks (e.g. recording geology) can be highly technical,
needing a lot of practice
• Difficult to create a “recipe” or flowchart
• Ultimately the overall task of connecting buildings to quarries is
hard

21. Successes and Challenges
Results of research so far
• It is difficult to ensure standardised results across all areas
• It is sometimes difficult to persuade people that they are
perfectly capable of making useful technical observations
However
• Fantastically dedicated work being put in
• Previously unknown and often surprising things coming out
• This enriches the project beyond what was originally envisaged
• An overlapping patchwork of both deep and broad studies
• Part of project staff’s role is to direct effort to fill the gaps
• Local knowledge and access is invaluable

22. Successes and Challenges
Supporting
Volunteers
• Training
• Drop-in sessions
• Dedicated archivist
• Combine the skills
of those with more
and less technical
backgrounds

23. A Building Stones Database
Building a database-driven
website
• Key requirements
• Remote access to enter data
• Webmap GIS to show data spatially
• Interconnectedness between related
• Intuitive, solid functionality for data entry
and searching
• Flexible to changing requirements
• Planning-procurement-development
process takes a long time
• Early start important

24. A Building Stones Database
Development
• Agile approach – no detailed specification
• Has been good and saved time
• But need to have mutual trust
• Shared index, management and API with Welsh Chapels Project
• Split schema accommodates differences in data
• Saved time and money for all concerned
Difficult Questions
• Data forms’ complexity vs. formidability
• Issues of certainty
• Assign a reliability to each reference?
• Contradictions change everything
• Multiple mutually exclusive possibilities?
• Excel for data collection

25. The (Nearly) Finished Result

26. Webmap

27. Webmap

28. Webmap

29. Webmap

30. Record View

31. Record View

32. Links to source quarries

33. Links to source quarries

34. Editing Records

35. Searching and Filtering

36. Searching and Filtering

37. Searching and Filtering

38. Going Forward
• Increasing scientific testing as stone samples collected
• More work to define and assign tasks to fill gaps in data
• Ongoing training and support for volunteers
• Final edits and features built for the website
• Iterative tweaks in response to testing in the real world

39. Thank you
Get in touch or find us at:
building.stones@worc.ac.uk
01905 542014
@BuildingStones
www.buildingstones.org.uk (from April 2015)