Monument record 583 - Medieval to Modern Industrial Activity (Collyweston Slate Extraction, Collyweston)

Famous stone slates of Collyweston, Easton and Kirby. Used from at least the Roman period.

{1} Famous stone slates of Collyweston, Easton and Kirby. Slates of this description were certainly quarried by the Romans, and have occurred both at Irchester and in the villa at Apethorpe Park (VCH I p.182+192). During the Middle Ages they were also in great request eg. At Rockingham Castle c.1376 when 9,500 stone slates were transported from Colyn Weston. Other purchases are also listed, and in 1567 when Elizabeth was firmly established on the throne, loads of slates were bought for repairs to the Queen Majesty’s House at Collyweston. Use of slates outside the county is recorded at Cambridge universities.
Towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign and in the time of her successor considerable litigation took place as to manorial rights and questions of tithe in Collyweston. In 1589/90 Thomas Smith deposed that the queen’s officers or their deputies used to dig slate of all the tenants’ lands there except the glebe. The parsons and their farmers were forbidden to dig slate by the Crown. More details are given in the text. C.1614 the parson Zachary Hunt declared from the testimony of ancient men of that town that the custom of digging slate upon the copyhold lands was of long standing.
The term Collyweston slate is given to a fine-grained, calcareo-areenaceous rock occurring at the base of the Lincolnshire Limestone. It is found and has been worked at other places besides Collyweston, such as Kirby and Easton, between Collyweston and Stamford. The quarries at and near Collyweston have been worked from very early times.
There is only one bed of stone yielding slates, varying from 6ins to 3ft deep. It is worked in open quarries, or in ‘fox-holes’, ie long galleries underground, in the winter. The stones are split with the use of freezing water along the bedding planes, which renders cleaving very easy, though skilful.

{2} The source of the fissile (roofing) material is the bed of slate stone which lies under the village of Collyweston, three miles south of Stamford. Stone slates from this source have been found at Roman sites such as Irchester and Apethorpe, and during the reign of Edward III 9,500 stone slates were transported to Rockingham Castle. Exchequer accounts from 1300-1599 show that there was great demand for them in the royal building programme.

{6} The underlying rock is mainly Lower Lincolnshire Limestone, a fissile bed of which outcrops in a narrow band across the parish and was the source of the stone slates to which the village gives its name. These slates have been worked since the Middle Ages or earlier, and the industry only ceased in 1967.
Roof covering (preface):
At the base of the Lower Lincolnshire Limestone is a bed of fissile stone which is locally suitable for making stone slates. Although it may have been exploited in Roman times, the earliest documentary evidence for its use is in the C13th. The main quarries were at Collyweston, which gave its name to the slates, and Easton on The Hill, but working extended as far west as Kirby, near Gretton. Identifiable late medieval slates are generally about 20mm thick, with an uneven surface, and have a hole about 10mm in diameter formed by drilling. Their weight demands a sturdy roof. The process of frosting was discovered or developed probably in the C16th, the earliest reference to it being in 1611. Post-medieval slates are consequently much thinner, sometimes only 5mm, and have smaller holes, sometimes drilled, but by the C19th always pecked, and up to 7mm across. When laid, slates were hung over riven laths with short wooden pegs, and torched from below or sometimes bedded in mortar.
Slate stone was probably first won from just below the surface, where the fissile beds outcrop, but in time was obtained from progressively deeper pits, and finally from mines. Open pits were being dug at Collyweston in 1633, when the manorial court ordered that those dug in any one year should be filled in the next and returned to agriculture; a limit of 25 pits per year was set to prevent the supply being exhausted. The stone was raised in December and January, and the blocks laid out and kept wet until the action of the forst rendered them ready for splitting. Whe last dug in 1966-7 the slates were won from ‘foxholes’ or galleries in a mine at Collyweston. The slates from Easton were often considered superior to those from Collyweston, and said to be harder.

{10} Limestone occurs extensively in the East Midlands and has been used widely both for building and, when burnt, for mortar and agricultural purposes. The most extensive is Jurassic limestone. Collyweston produced excellent roofing slates which were widely used. This limestone has also been used for the production of lime.

{11} The Romans used Collyweston slate on buildings close to known sources of Collyweston stone. Slates have been found at Apethorpe, Irchester, Great Casterton, Godmanchester, Encomb and Norden.
A Roman settlement of less than 10ha lay south of the village on a west-facing slope at a height of 280ft, on limestone. Roman pottery has been found in an old quarry there, and pottery and roof tiles have been noted on adjacent land.
Earl Morcar, then holder of the Manor of Collyweston, burned many of the buildings in Northamptonshire shortly before the Norman Conquest, which would have rid the roofs of the area of their timber shingles.
It is generally recognised that the early use of stone slates would have usually been as a result of finding the material naturally as an outcrop. These findings lead to the start of an entire industry through further quarrying and in turn mining. It is not known when the process of frosting first became knowledgeable, but as noted by Woolmer the climate from the mid C16th altered, producing a series of cold winters.
During the latter years of Elizabeth I’s reign and during that of James I, there are numerous records of disputes and litigation over the manorial rights. It would appear that stone was being mined or quarried across land lease boundaries by the Lord of The Manor, and that the lease holders were not paying their requisite fines when removing stone from the land which they leased.
By 1633 there were open pits at Collyweston, but even at this early stage there were concerns over exhausting the supply. To ensure that the amount of slate mined was controlled a Manorial Court Order was made to ensure that the pits dug in any one year were filled and returned to farm land the next. The number of pits per year was limited to 25.
In 1849 Whellan records that only 15 people were employed in the stone slate industry, a number that only rose to 19 in 1874. The reason for this decline was the increased use of Welsh slate, ‘cheap, durable and convenient’. However in 1901 VCH documents that most of the villagers were employed as slaters and lime-burners.
In the 1920s there were 6 slating pits in operation at Collyweston. Woolmer notes that there was a revival of the industry in the 1950s, but warmer winters of the early 1960s put an end to the industry.
Following the establishment of the Collyweston Stone Slaters Trust the Burghley Estate pit was reopened and during the winter of 1984/5 four tons of log was extracted.
Slates were mainly quarried at Collyweston, Easton, Duddington, Deene Park and Kirby.
Since the early C17th up until the early 1960s quarrying was achieved through tunnels, adits or shafts, known locally as ‘foxholes’. These were entered through an open shaft of approximately 8ft square.

{13} Numerous former stone pits around Geddington, Pipewell, Harringworth, Wakerley, Collyweston and Easton, were described by the geologists Samuel Sharp and J.W.Judd in the C19th.
Lower Lincolnshire Limestone is the local building stone of more than 20 villages on or close to its outcrop, and is the source of Northamptonshire’s Collyweston Slates. Lincolnshire Limestone forms a broad plateau from high above the Welland valley at Easton on The Hill, Collyweston and Duddington, across to Wittering, Barnack and Ufford. From Collyweston and Duddington the outcrop continues south-westwards along the Welland escarpment through Wakerley and Gretton, above the villages of Rockingham and Cottingham, as far as Wilbarston.
The county’s famous stone slates come from the area of Collyweston, Easton on The Hill and Wothorpe; some were also obtained for a time at Kirby, near Deene, and locally at Harringworth and Wakerley, all places along a narrow north-east to south-west belt and within 1km to 3km of the east side of the Welland Valley. Geologically they come from the lowest beds of the Lower Lincolnshire Limestone in a few localities where these beds form a sandy limestone with the necessary properties to split into thin plates; in most other places the lowest beds are sandy limestones that are not suitably fissile, or are only partially cemented sands.
When the damp rock is exposed to frost it splits naturally into thin layers. Material for roofing would have been first found where it lay at the surface. In due course the slatestone was obtained by digging into the limestone plateau around Collyweston and Easton on The Hill, and an industry developed which was able to supply for instance 14,000 slates for Rockingham Castle in the C14th and many subsequent consignments for major buildings in the county as well as for several of the Cambridge colleges, conveyed via the fenland waterways.
The industry, which thrived for centuries, developed its own particular skills. Shafts had to be dug, sometimes 8m to 10m through the thickness of Lower Lincolnshire Limestone to reach the soft sand underlying the Collyweston horizon. From the shafts galleries were dug horizontally in the sand, just high enough for the miner to lie on his side, using a foxing pick to undermine the slate bed. He supported it at intervals with stone props, but he would listen for clicks in the bed (known as ‘talking’), indicating that the bed was about to fall, when he would withdraw, removing the props. Working sections of about 4m were determined by natural joints. Lumps of stone (known as ‘logs’) were then raised to the surface, alid out and constantly kept damp, waiting for a succession of frosts to split the stone. Slate mining was therefore mostly carried out in December and January. Later in the year the slaters could tap open the log with a cliving hammer, and begin the skilled work of dressing the slates in a range of sizes.
Slate mining used to be done by individual copyholders, and there were many shafts and a warren of underground galleries, but the industry was always very labour-intensive, and by the 1960s only 3 mines were still operating. A succession of mild winters hastened the decline. Underground mining has now ceased altogether, but slate ‘log’ is obtainable from the bottom of the opencast Collyweston Quarry, though still requiring winter frost. The Collyweston Stone Slaters Trust was formed in 1982 to support the declining industry.

{14}{15} Collyweston stone was mined to provide roofing slates from Roman times, with the peak of activity in the 18th century. Extracted slate 'logs' were exposed to frost in order to cleave into slates. There were workings on bothe sides of the A43 but most have been ploughed over. Note the name Slate Drift leading odd the main road.

<1> Serjeantson R.M.; Ryland W. (Editors), 1906, The Victoria History of the Counties of England: Northamptonshire, p.296-97+303 (part checked) (Series). SNN100369.

<2> Steane J., 1974, The Northamptonshire Landscape, p.180-81 (checked) (Book). SNN5137.

<3> Sharp S., 1870, The Oolites of Northamptonshire, p.354-375 (unchecked) (Article). SNN74230.

<4> RUDD J.W., 1875, The Geology of Rutland and Surrounding Areas, p.182-3 (unchecked) (Book). SNN2558.

<5> Purcell D., 1967, Cambridge Stone, p.59-63 (unchecked) (Book). SNN107874.

<6> Royal Commission on The Historical Monuments of England, 1984, An Inventory of The Historical Monuments in The County of Northampton, Preface+p.30 (checked) (Series). SNN77384.

<7> Wollmer J.R., 1985, Collyweston Stone Slate, (unchecked) (Dissertation). SNN102674.

<8> Clifton-Taylor A., 1987, The Pattern Of English Building, p.104 (unchecked) (Book). SNN100724.

<9> Burgess J., 1991, Collyweston Slate and Its Use Today, (unchecked) (Unpublished Report). SNN107875.

<10> Palmer M; Neaverson P., 1992, Industrial Landscapes of the East Midlands, p.39 (checked) (Book). SNN3691.

<11> Brook A.C., 1998, The Past, Present and Uncertain Future of Collyweston Stone Slate, p.1-15 (part checked) (Dissertation). SNN101796.

<12> Whellan W., 1849, History, Gazetteer and Directory of Northamptonshire, (unchecked) (Directory). SNN100427.

<13> Sutherland D.S., 2003, Northamptonshire Stone, p.26+71-76 (checked) (Book). SNN104515.

<14> Northamptonshire Industrial Archaeology Group, 2001, A Guide To The Industrial Heritage Of Northamptonshire, Site 67 (checked) (Gazetteer). SNN104759.

<15> Northamptonshire Industrial Archaeology Group, 2011, A Guide To The Industrial Heritage of Northamptonshire (2nd Edition), Site 69 (checked) (Gazetteer). SNN107622.

Record last edited

Oct 8 2024 12:40PM