Egton Quarry

Overview

Egton Quarry worked the Cleveland Dyke where it crosses the Esk valley near Grosmont. Near Egton Bridge the dyke stands up as a lofty wall over the water, and it is that hard basalt — whinstone — that was quarried, here as at every other place along the intrusion where it broke surface. The 1914 List of Mines records the quarry under Go. and William Schofield with two men employed: one of the smallest workings on the dyke, and typical of the earliest of them.

History

The Cleveland Dyke was quarried wherever it outcropped, and it outcrops in a long line. Denis Goldring's survey of the ground lists twenty-seven local whinstone quarries between Nunthorpe and Blea Hill Rigg on the North York Moors, the earliest dating to the early 1800s. Those earliest quarries were quite small, and the stone went to maintain local roads; it was the arrival of the railways that created the means to export it across the north of England.

Egton is one of the string of quarried outcrops running south-east across the moors from Great Ayton — Kildale, Castleton, Lealholm, Glaisdale, Egton Bridge, Sil Howe east of the Murk Esk valley, and finally Blea Hill Rigg on Fylingdales Moor. Near Egton Bridge the dyke stands up in a lofty wall over the waters of the Esk, and the breadth of the intrusion here is commonly about sixty feet, as it is at Cockfield Fell and at Langbaurgh.

The 1914 List of Mines enters Egton at Grosmont under Go. and William Schofield, working whinstone, with two men employed. Nothing on record gives an opening or closing date, an output, or any further owner.

Geology

The Cleveland Dyke is a band of igneous rock injected while molten into the local strata in the Palaeogene, about fifty-eight million years ago. The magma flowed from a volcanic source near the Isle of Mull in Scotland, and the flow is calculated to have taken up to five days to reach Cleveland — a single intrusive event traceable across the north of England to the Yorkshire coast. The rock is a very hard, resistant basalt, commonly called whinstone from the gorse or whin that grows where it outcrops, and it stands proud wherever the softer sedimentary rocks around it have been eroded away. That hardness is the whole of its commercial value and also the constraint on working it: the dyke is a narrow, steeply-inclined band, about sixty feet across here, so a quarry follows a line rather than opening a broad face.

Geological setting: Dykes and Sills (well documented example), Faults and Fractures (well documented example)

Workings

A small quarry on the line of the dyke near Egton Bridge, employing two men in 1914. Nothing on record describes its faces, its plant or how the stone was taken away, though the Esk valley railway runs through the same ground and the export of whinstone from these moors is generally credited to the railways.

Closure

The closure date is not known. The quarry was working in 1914 with two men, and nothing on record carries it further. A two-man quarry on a sixty-foot dyke was never going to outlast the shift from hand-dressed setts to crushed and tarred aggregate, but that is not stated of Egton anywhere read and is not asserted.

What remains

Unknown. No dated site report or photograph identifiable as this quarry is recorded. The dyke itself remains conspicuous near Egton Bridge, standing over the Esk.

Unknown. Nothing on record describes what survives at this quarry.

Related mines

• Cliff Rigg Quarry — Two quarries on the same intrusion, the Cleveland Dyke, worked for the same whinstone at opposite ends of its run across the North York Moors — Cliff Rigg under Roseberry Topping where the dyke is fifteen metres thick, Egton where it stands as a wall over the Esk. Both appear in the 1914 York North Riding return.

Recorded claims

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

• The 1914 List of Mines records Egton at Grosmont under Go. and William Schofield, working whinstone, with two men employed. ¹
• The Cleveland Dyke is a band of igneous rock injected while molten into the local rocks about 58 million years ago; the magma flowed from a volcanic source near the Isle of Mull and the flow is calculated to have taken up to five days to reach Cleveland. The rock, commonly called whinstone, is very hard and resistant, and wherever it outcrops it has been extensively quarried and used for roadstone. ²
• Quarried outcrops of the dyke run south-east across the North York Moors at Kildale, Castleton, Lealholm, Glaisdale, Egton Bridge, Sil Howe east of the Murk Esk valley and Blea Hill Rigg on Fylingdales Moor, and the breadth of the intrusion is commonly about sixty feet, as at Cockfield Fell, Langbaurgh and Egton; near Egton Bridge it stands up in a lofty wall over the waters of the Esk. ²
• Twenty-seven local whinstone quarries are listed between Nunthorpe and Blea Hill Rigg, the earliest dating to the early 1800s; those earliest quarries were quite small, with the stone used to maintain local roads, and the arrival of the railways created the means to export the stone across the north of England. ²

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (primary) 1914 List of Mines under the Metalliferous Mines Act: York, North Riding — Durham Mining Museum
2. (observational) The Cleveland Dyke — Out & About (Fhithich)

Record created: 5 September 2026 · Last researched: 5 September 2026