Locharbriggs Quarry

Overview

Three red sandstone quarries north-east of Dumfries, worked since the eighteenth century and still working, which are the type locality of the Locharbriggs Sandstone Formation and a classic site for desert sedimentology.

History

Three quarries lie in a north-west to south-east line at Locharbriggs, five kilometres north-east of Dumfries and just north of Heathall: Knowehead at the north, Locharbriggs North in the middle, and Locharbriggs South. They cut a red Permian sandstone that has been worked here since the eighteenth century and is one of the best known building stones in Scotland. The red comes from iron oxide in a silica cement, and the rock itself is the fossilised floor of a desert. It has been quarried for building and ornamental stone, and Locharbriggs stone went into buildings across Dumfries, Glasgow and Edinburgh and further south into England. The middle quarry is the type locality for the Locharbriggs Sandstone Formation, the name Brookfield introduced in 1978 after noting that the older term Dumfries Sandstone had already been used for a different unit. The succession here has been described repeatedly since Harkness wrote on it in 1850. Locharbriggs North Quarry was chosen as the Geological Conservation Review site and notified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest for its Permian and Triassic red beds; its condition was assessed as unfavourable, no change, in March 2007. The southern quarry is still worked, and produces building and ornamental stone. Quarrying and the science have fed each other: the faces expose some twenty metres of well-sorted fine to medium sandstone with large-scale cross-bedding preserved in tabular sets, and three orders of bounding surface can be traced across them. Rare vertebrate tracks have been found in thin beds of clay-rich silt at Locharbriggs and at Corncockle Muir in Annandale, assigned to four species of the ichnogenus Chelichnus and thought to have been made by dicynodonts and pelycosaurs.

Geology

The quarries expose the middle part of the Locharbriggs Sandstone Formation, lower Permian sediments laid down about 260 million years ago when southern Scotland lay some ten degrees north of the equator and this was a sand desert. The sequence is about twenty metres thick and dominated by well-sorted fine to medium sandstones cemented by silica and coloured red by iron oxide. Large-scale cross-bedding is preserved in planar and wedge-shaped sets half a metre to two metres thick, dipping south-west, and three orders of bounding surface record the migration of transverse dunes across much larger draa dunes thought to have stood between 110 and 250 metres high. The dominant wind blew from the north-east. Interdune clays, lag deposits and raindrop imprints are all absent, which suggests the area saw little or no rain. The site is the type locality of the formation, and a graphic example of desert structures on the scale of hundreds of metres that is unique in Britain.

Workings

Three open quarries aligned north-west to south-east: Knowehead at the north, Locharbriggs North in the middle and Locharbriggs South at the south. The southern quarry is the one still worked, for building and ornamental stone.

Closure

Locharbriggs South Quarry remains in production. The northern and middle quarries are no longer worked; the middle one is the Geological Conservation Review site and the designated Site of Special Scientific Interest.

What remains

Locharbriggs Quarry Site of Special Scientific Interest, site code 1074, is notified for its Permian and Triassic red beds; the feature was recorded as unfavourable, no change, when monitored in March 2007. The working quarry to the south continues to produce block stone.

The quarry faces themselves are the feature of interest, carrying the cross-bedding and bounding surfaces for which the site is designated.

Redevelopment

The site has not been redeveloped; part remains a working quarry and part is a protected geological site.

Nearby mines

• Corncockle Quarry — 11.4 km NE

Straight-line distance, within 15 km. Show on the map.

Recorded claims

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

• Locharbriggs North Quarry is the type locality for the Locharbriggs Sandstone Formation, a name introduced by Brookfield in 1978. ¹
• Three quarries lie in a line at Locharbriggs - Knowehead, Locharbriggs North and Locharbriggs South - of which the southern is still worked for building and ornamental stone. ¹
• The sandstone was deposited in a desert about 260 million years ago, when this part of Scotland lay close to the equator. ^1,2
• The site is notified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest for its Permian and Triassic red beds, and the feature was assessed as unfavourable, no change, in March 2007. ²
• Vertebrate tracks assigned to four species of the ichnogenus Chelichnus, thought to have been made by dicynodonts and pelycosaurs, have been found in the Locharbriggs sediments, though they are rare. ¹

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (primary) Locharbriggs North Quarry, Dumfries and Galloway - Geological Conservation Review — JNCC, Geological Conservation Review Series No. 24 (via GeoGuide)
2. (primary) Locharbriggs Quarry Site of Special Scientific Interest - site management statement — NatureScot
3. (primary) Building stones in Edinburgh from the Permian and Triassic New Red Sandstone of Dumfries and Galloway and Cumbria — British Geological Survey
4. (secondary) Locharbriggs — Wikipedia

Record created: 23 September 2026 · Last researched: 23 September 2026