Three Quarries in or near the Parish of Ruardean (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Saturday, January 30, 2016, 04:15 (3221 days ago) @ Jefff

(cont.)
Ian Pope's book details how the Hawkwell Brickworks was rebuilt as the Coleford Brick & Tile Co in 1936, a 1960s photo shows it's perhaps 1/2 mile from the Northern United spoil tip.
It also contains a superb old photo of Hawkwell Row, a terrace of 16 houses built by Joseph Chivers for his mine workforce, it's still there at base of Ruardean Hill overlooking the A4136 road.

2. "Cinder wholes" could be almost anywhere in the Forest that has a charcoal-burning or ironmaking history, so it could be Cinderhills as you say. Possibly the nearest to "your" area is mentioned in the Mitcheldean section of the British History site, but who knows for sure ???

"Ironworking continued in the later Middle Ages, when furnaces, known as oresmithies, were supplied with ore mined presumably at the Wilderness or in the adjoining royal demesne. Slag from the works was tipped in many parts of the town to form cinder hills, the most notable being in Brook Street. The masters running the industry were known as smith-holders and several were also engaged in mining and husbandry in the early 16th century. One parishioner, by will proved 1570, required the user of his anvil and bellows to distribute 12d. a year to the poor on Good Friday. In the early 16th century eight smithies, presumably including several forges, were working on Sir Alexander Baynham's estate but in the 1540s, when several smithies were used for other purposes, the town's iron industry was in decline and at the end of the century it was not of primary importance. Many, if not all, of the miners living in Mitcheldean at that time presumably mined iron ore at the Wilderness. Limestone was being quarried there by 1634, when a man was granted liberty to burn lime."
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol5/pp173-195

3. "Hastonbridge" is probably, as you say, Aston Bridge. You probably know this is the area to the southwestern side of Ruardean Hill, north of Brierley, so quite near Hawkwell to it's south. Modern satellite photos shows small-scale quarrying still in the middle of the woods, just south of the Pludds. This may be the same Quarry referred to in this newspaper article, which describes the death of Pludds man and freeminer Eric Morris, who worked at Astonbridge Quarry, "which was opened by his great-great grandfather in 1841".

http://www.gloucestercitizen.co.uk/Wife-s-tribute-Forest-freeminer-Eric-Morris-80/story...

Here's another mention of presumably the same quarry, in 1899.
http://www.cmhrc.co.uk/site/database/result/10271.html

This Gloucestershire Society for Industrial Archaeology Report about Quarrying c1841 mentions Astonbridge Quarry, altho sadly the relevant diagram plan is not present - I suggest you contact for clarification, this maybe just a website problem.
http://www.gsia.org.uk/reprints/2007/gi200714.pdf

Further evidence is again found within the British History site,

"The hamlet of Brierley, sometimes called Brierley Hill, on the main Coleford road southwest of Nailbridge, grew in the mid 19th century. The earliest cottages, built between 1787 and 1834, were one at a quarry on the north side of the road, and ...."
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol5/pp300-325

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Regarding your hope to revisit the quarries from over 200 years ago, I'm afraid I think this will be very difficult. As with the mines, I would have expected any quarry in 1793 to be significantly changed by now. If not completely worked-out hence drastically enlarged hence change of landscape, or visually "landscaped" by forest regrowth such as the old spoil heaps at Fancy View ?. Even evidence of the large Victorian quarrying on Plump Hill is hard to spot nowadays, so what chance something much earlier and probably smaller ?.

So, hopefully this helps. The next step is to lookup the old Ordnance Survey maps, altho' they only started in the mid 1800s, I'll try tomorrow as it's rather late now.