Ian Thomas, director of the National Stone Centre, in Wirksworth, tells how the county's natural resources have been used and reveals how they have become ubiquitous today.
EVEN before we get up in the morning we are probably using Derbyshire minerals, especially limestone.
As the central heating kicks in, the sulphur dioxide gases from electricity generation are captured by adding pure limestone while the pipes and wires delivering our heating are either metals refined using limestone or use the rock as plastic filler.
As we step out of bed, our rubber carpet underlay has limestone or sand in it. We go into the bathroom and the tiles are made of clays, sand and a granite mineral (but not from this area), so is the wash basin and loo.
We look through the window or in the mirror – glass made by melting sand, limestone and soda ash (which uses Derbyshire limestone and Cheshire salt). It goes into our toothpaste, along with fluorine compounds – until recently mainly from this county.
The waste water we flush away is purified, again, with limestone.
If we use cosmetics, minerals strike again – as fillers and pigments – mica even finds its way into silky shampoos and nail varnish.
Breakfast, too, is laden with minerals. Our crockery, especially if it comes from Denby, is made with local clays.
Cows, pigs and hens all have fine limestone to boost calcium in their feed; for the same reason, it goes into our bread to lessen the possibility of rickets and the stone is essential in refining sugar.
Our cutlery, too, is dependent upon iron and other metal ores, limestone – or its cousin dolomite – and fluorspar.
If we read a glossy mag, the chances are that it contains clays, limestone and, if weighty, the dense mineral baryte. As we dash out of the door, we may grab indigestion tablets containing magnesia, a product of dolomite.
So, if we add in all the building materials in our home, bike or car, and all the other technical stuff we've skipped over, we've probably used minerals, and especially limestone, a hundred times, before we leave home.
About half of the UK's need for very high purity limestone and dolomite is satisfied by the White Peak and Whitwell respectively. In a typical year, before the recent decline in the economy, on average each of us consumed three to four tonnes of British minerals, for our share of roads, schools, homes, shops and so on.
On top of that, about a quarter of all the aggregates we need for building are recycled – a better record than almost anywhere else.
Derbyshire has almost always been on the quarrying front line, probably since at least 1650 when a survey of the Manor of the High Peak recorded 14 kilns active around Dove Holes, near Buxton.
In the 19th Century, George Stephenson erected a massive bank of limekilns at Ambergate, served by Crich Cliff Quarry. Five decades earlier, the Butterley Company was already quarrying and limeburning in the area.
In complete contrast, Derbyshire was also famed as a source of decorative marbles. Although geologically these are not true marbles – they are limestones capable of taking a high polish – they include Ashford Black, Cockleshell, Derbyshire Fossil, Birds Eye and Hopton Wood.
All feature at Chatsworth and one variety of the Fossil Marble has been worked on the estate, near Sheldon, since the 16th Century and is still being produced.
The beautiful cream Hopton Wood Marble, especially from around Middleton, not only found its way into numerous stately homes and official buildings across Britain, including Kedleston and the Palace of Westminster, it was also the British stone of choice for leading sculptors like Hepworth, Gill, Epstein and Moore.
Totally different again, the sandstones of the Peak – belonging mainly to the Millstone Grit geological group – were famed across the country from Medieval times for their tenacity as millstones, then, as French stones began to take over, they provided the grindstones vital for the Sheffield edge tool industry.
When synthetic materials ousted the natural stones and their risk of deadly silicosis, quarries turned to a new market, that of bulky stones required to shred timber to wood pulp for papermaking.
These were exported in great quantities to Canada, Scandinavia, Russia and Japan but, when wars or recession struck, countless stocks were left unsold; it is usually these pulpstones, rather than millstones, which we see dotted around the Peak Park.
The sandstones also offered the county's main building material, used either alone or as dressings for brick in country houses and government buildings, from town halls across the land to Portcullis House accommodating MPs' offices in London.
The industry has seen tremendous changes. In the early 1900s, about 4,000 people, almost all men, quarried approximately 2.5 million tonnes of rock, sand and clay, almost all back-breakingly lifted by hand.
By 1938, 6,200 people worked in the Derbyshire quarrying industry and produced six million tonnes of mineral. Seventy years later, in 2008, employment had fallen to about 1,500 but output had increased to more than 17 million tonnes, of which 15.7 million were limestone – the world's most useful rock. More rock and gravel is still dug in the county than any other in the UK – almost exactly the same output of rock and gravel as the whole of Wales.
The Tunstead Old Moor complex at Buxton, at one time employed almost 1,000 people. Between 1929 and 1960, this site alone replaced almost 20 other quarries in what was then the ICI Group. Although staff numbers there are well down on that figure, it still ranks as one of Europe's largest operations.
Instead of sheer muscle, rock is shifted by loaders and dumpers, some of which cost more than £500,000 each and can carry up to 100 tonnes. Some of the larger quarries now have women managers.
For such a long-lived, large and still incredibly diverse industry, it is perhaps very surprising indeed that no detailed history of the industry has been published.
The National Stone Centre is planning to fill this hole and, as a first step, today held a meeting, with support from the University of Nottingham, to generate ideas and information. Hopefully, this will provide a solid bedrock on which to build this fascinating history.
![Lime is a cornerstone of our modern life and Derbyshire still digs as much rock and gravel as the whole of Wales]( "Lime is a cornerstone of our modern life and Derbyshire still digs as much rock and gravel as the whole of Wales")
