Butsfield Quarry

Overview

A small ganister quarry on the moor edge west of Consett, worked by the Consett Iron Company in the 1920s with fourteen men. Its stone was not sold: it went to the company's own brickworks, crushed and mixed with clay for the semi-silica bricks that lined the ironworks a few miles away.

History

Butsfield appears in the 1922 List of Quarries under the Consett Iron Company Ltd., returning ganister and employing fourteen, ten of them below ground and four at the surface — a working small enough to be a single face and a handful of men, but tied to one of the largest ironworks in the north of England. The Consett Iron Company was registered in 1864, successor to the Derwent and Consett Iron Company, and by that date already held collieries across north-west Durham; it passed to the National Coal Board at nationalisation.

Ganister was worth quarrying because of what it could be turned into. Delves Brickworks, built in 1874 between Delves Lane and Knitsley Lane to meet the company's own need for refractory bricks and shapes, began on fireclay and seggar clay won with the coal from the company's collieries; in later years crushed ganister rock from Butsfield Quarry was mixed with that clay to make semi-silica bricks. After the First World War it became clear that coke ovens would have to be built of silica brick, and a new works at Templetown was opened in 1924 on the site of the old beehive coke ovens to make silica bricks and shapes; it trebled in size over the following years, and almost half of all the coke ovens in the country were built with Templetown bricks, with refractories exported to Australia, India and the United States. No account of Butsfield's own working life, its opening or its closing, has come to light beyond the single 1922 return.

Geology

Ganister is a hard, fine-grained quartzitic sandstone, better than ninety per cent silica, which occurs in the Coal Measures typically as the seatearth immediately beneath a coal seam. The quarries around Rowlands Gill, Satley and Salters Gate worked stone of this kind, some of it hard and quartzitic enough to be called ganister and some taken for building and dimension stone.

Geological setting: Sedimentary Beds and Seams (well documented example)

Workings

The 1922 return puts ten of the fourteen employed below ground and four at the surface, so the working was at least partly underground rather than an open face alone — usual where ganister is followed as a bed beneath a coal seam.

Closure

The quarry appears in the 1922 List of Quarries and in no later list.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• The 1922 List of Quarries records Butsfield Quarry under the Consett Iron Co. Ltd., returning ganister and employing fourteen, ten below ground and four at the surface. ¹
• Crushed ganister from the company's quarrying was mixed with clay at the Consett brickworks to make semi-silica bricks, and a new brickworks at Templetown opened in 1924 to make silica bricks and shapes. ²
• Returned under the Consett Iron Company Ltd. in the 1920s. ¹
• The 1922 return records ganister output and fourteen employed, ten below ground and four at the surface. ¹
• Crushed ganister from Butsfield Quarry was mixed with clay at the company's Delves Brickworks to make semi-silica bricks. ³
• The quarry stood near Satley, eleven miles west of Durham, at NZ096445. ¹

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (primary) Butsfield Quarry (Ganister) — Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Old Bricks: England 6-2 — Old Bricks (brocross.com)
3. (secondary) Templetown Brickworks: memories shared by Alan Swinburne — History of Consett Steelworks

Record created: 11 September 2026 · Last researched: 24 September 2026