Welcome to Quarryville

The quarrying of rocks and minerals in Britain started 2 million years ago.

Was that when dinosaurs ruled the earth?

Or the Flintstones?

Actually, it was neither. It was in the days of our prehistoric ancestor Homo Habilis, otherwise known as Handy Man.

Habilis and his mates began a form of primitive quarrying when they started picking up stones to use as tools. Quarrying has come a long way since then.

Here are some hard facts about modern quarrying:

• Crushed stone (or aggregate, to use its technical name) is used in buildings, roads, medicines, cosmetics, food, plastic, paper and paints
• The quarrying industry plants over 2 million trees every year
• The water you drink is cleaned using a sand filter made partly of concrete
• Salt is the rock we eat most often
• Toothpaste is mostly limestone
• 25,000 people work in the UK’s quarrying industry
• Working at a quarry is less dangerous than working on a building site – but only because quarry workers follow a strict set of rules