Hi Paulycats
Thought I would reply before Larry has the chance to hit the hard stuff again.
That rates list was probably from the mid seventies. We would only work very occaisonally out of Raisby when there was nothing else locally as there was a lot of empty mileage.
Most of our quarry work was out of Springwell. The quarry was originally owned by Alan Harrison but was bought by Raisby (Ropner family) somewhere around the mid sixties and was run totally separately from Raisby having its own management etc. and trading as Natural Stone Quarries.
Springwell was sandstone as opposed to Raisby’s limestone and a lot of dressed stone was produced and supplied to the building trade, especially in Scotland, in the form of stone sills, quoins, fire places etc.
Several large buildings in Glasgow and Edinburgh are faced with Springwell stone. There was about 30 masons employed on the line at the top of the quarry.
Grindstones, sometimes 7/8 feet in diameter were also made and supplied to the engineering industry, I once took a load of Grindstones down to Fyffe dock at Swansea, they were headed to the Bahamas.
The raw stone blocks were also much in demand for the stone masons in Scotland. We used to take 2/3 loads a week to Thaw & Campbell in Glasgow.
We would often have 10/15 tippers daily leading the crushed stone. Most of the Western Bypass sits on Springwell stone. I was riding shotgun when the very first load of stone was tipped at the end of the Team Valley, we returned with second load about an hour later to find the original had sunk without trace. The whole area is a bog.
Other big jobs supplied out of Springwell I can recall were sections of the Coast and Spine roads, Washington Highway and the Sewage treatment plant at Howden.
In 1976 most of the stone was exhausted and the crusher was closed down. The dressed stone line continued for some time after that but then the stone ran out altogether and the whole place closed. Some very skilled men lost their jobs at that point.
Thompsons of Prudhoe then obtained the tipping rights and are still tipping there.
Cheers Tyneside