Mines in Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire has no metal and no coal — its extractive history is entirely one of Jurassic sediments. Barnack's limestone was quarried from Roman times until the beds ran out around 1500, by which point it had built Peterborough and Ely cathedrals; the exhausted workings are now a nationally important wildflower reserve. Twenty miles south, the Oxford Clay around Whittlesey proved so naturally oily that it helped fire its own bricks, supporting what was for a time the largest brickmaking industry in the world — and, in one of the pits, preserving the Bronze Age settlement at Must Farm.

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Record created: 22 August 2026