Midland Quarry

Overview

Midland Quarry worked the hard Precambrian rock of Tuttle Hill on the north-western edge of Nuneaton, one of a line of quarries along the ridge that supplied road stone and setts to the Midlands. The Midlands Quarry Company began working here in 1876; David Ensor bought the quarry from them, and it stayed in the Ensor family into the twentieth century. Stone was taken away by a private railway to the Coventry Canal and the main line at Abbey Street. Working had ceased by the time the plant was photographed in 1974, and the sixteen-hectare site was redeveloped for housing after 2000, with the flooded main void kept as open water.

History

Quarrying on Tuttle Hill worked the Precambrian rocks that break the surface at Nuneaton — a hard, dark diorite alongside the Cambrian sandstones and quartzites — which made the district one of the Midlands' main sources of road stone. The Midlands Quarry Company started operations at Midland Quarry in 1876. David Ensor bought the quarry from that company, and the Ensors were still running it in the 1920s, when a photograph of the quarrymen was taken with four generations of the family among them: John Ensor, his sons Jack, Harold and Bert, and George. Stone left the quarry by a private railway that ran down to a wharf on the Coventry Canal and to the sidings at Nuneaton Abbey Street station. The colliery-scale documentation that survives for the Warwickshire pits does not exist for the Tuttle Hill quarries, and the working history of Midland Quarry after the Ensor years is poorly recorded online. Photographs taken in 1974 show the plant still standing with a motley collection of excavators no longer in use, work in progress on the quarry floor and the remains of the processing plant beside Abbey Street station.

Geology

Tuttle Hill exposes the oldest rocks in the Midlands, a Precambrian and Cambrian inlier pushed up through the Warwickshire Coalfield. Midland Quarry worked both sandstone and diorite — the diorite being the hard igneous rock that made Nuneaton stone valuable for road making. A Regionally Important Geological Site within the quarry was deliberately preserved when the void was engineered for redevelopment.

Geological setting: Sedimentary Beds and Seams (historical documentary reference)

Workings

An open quarry in two voids, a large main void and a smaller shallow one, both surrounded by quarry waste. A private railway carried stone from the quarry down to a wharf on the Coventry Canal, where tippler wagons discharged into standard-gauge trucks, and to the main line at Nuneaton Abbey Street.

Closure

Photographs from 1974 show the plant standing idle with excavators out of use. The quarry was later redeveloped: a sixteen-hectare site was taken by Redrow Homes for housing, the smaller shallow void was infilled to make the development platform, and a 35-metre reinforced-soil embankment was built inside the quarry to win back land, the work winning an Institution of Civil Engineers West Midlands award in 2009. The main void was left as open water and allowed to rise to its natural groundwater level, five metres below the crest.

What remains

The main void is a lake, its water at the natural groundwater level five metres below the crest, surrounded by housing built on the infilled shallow void and on reclaimed quarry waste. The line of the quarry railway can still be traced towards the canal.

Redevelopment

Redrow Homes redeveloped the sixteen-hectare site for housing after the quarry closed. To maximise the developable land a 35-metre reinforced-soil embankment was built inside the quarry using layered polymer geosynthetics in the reclaimed quarry-waste fill, instrumented with extensometers, inclinometers and piezometers to watch for settlement as the fill saturated. The scheme was highly commended at the 2009 Ground Engineering Awards and won the Institution of Civil Engineers West Midlands geotechnical and construction award that year.

Nearby mines

• Haunchwood Colliery — 0.8 km SW
• Griff Colliery — 3.8 km S
• Ansley Hall Colliery — 4.7 km W
• Newdigate Colliery — 4.7 km S
• Baddesley Colliery — 8.7 km NW

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.

• The Midlands Quarry Co. started operations in 1876; David Ensor bought the quarry from them and the Ensor family were still the owners in the 1920s. ¹
• Midland Quarry was a sandstone and diorite quarry on a sixteen-hectare site near Nuneaton. ²
• Stone left the Tuttle Hill quarries by a private railway to a wharf on the Coventry Canal, where tippler wagons discharged into standard-gauge trucks, and to the sidings at Nuneaton Abbey Street. ³
• Photographs of 1974 show the Midland Quarry plant standing with a motley collection of excavators no longer in use. ³
• The quarry was redeveloped by Redrow Homes for housing: the shallow void was infilled for the development platform, a 35-metre reinforced-soil embankment was built inside the quarry, a Regionally Important Geological Site within it was preserved, and the main void was left as open water at its natural groundwater level. ²

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Nuneaton: Midland Quarry and workers — Our Warwickshire (Warwickshire County Council), from the Warwickshire Museums photographic collections
2. (secondary) Midland Quarry: reinforced soil embankment in a former quarry — P&S Consulting Engineers
3. (secondary) Brickyards, quarries and collieries of Nuneaton and north Warwickshire — The Nuneaton and North Warwickshire Local and Family History Web Site
4. (observational) Former railway to the Tuttle Hill Quarries (photographed 2023) — Geograph Britain and Ireland, Andrew Abbott

Record created: 8 September 2026 · Last researched: 9 September 2026