Many of our readers will be familiar with the long-running struggle against Stancliffe Stone, a quarrying company active in the Peak District, and in particular the area around Stanton Moor, home of many prehistoric monuments, among them the Nine Ladies stone circle. In 2009 a victory of sorts was felt to be won, and the protestors vacated their camp after ten years occupation. They cleared up immaculately and left the site, close to the Nine Ladies, in its peaceful, natural state. A brief history of the ongoing quarrying of the moor can be found on the Friends of the Peak web site.
But it seems that Stancliffe Stone are ready to try again. The pressure group ‘Stanton Against the Destruction of the Environment’ (SADE) have recently put out a plea for people to raise objections to a series of planning applications regarding the Dale View quarry, to the north of Stanton Moor.
Satellite image of Stanton Moor, showing location of prehistoric monuments south of Dale View quarry. © Google Earth
The Dale View Quarry can be seen on the image above, top centre. SADE have issued the following statement aimed initially at people living or working in the area (reproduced here with permission):
Dale View Quarry – Alarming Developments
You may already have noticed due to extra lorries and the huge size of the hole in the ground that Stancliffe Stone Ltd are undertaking an aggressive new attitude to quarrying at Dale View Quarry, Stanton-in-Peak. This is the quarry that was at the centre of so much media attention when the eco-warriors were in the district.
The company has recently lodged four new development applications with the Peak District National Park Authority which – if approved – will have massively detrimental effects on local landscapes and communities.
Please take a few minutes to object to these applications as they will affect us all, with increased traffic, dust, noise and a bigger and bigger void spoiling our wonderful views – the views which draw tourists to our area. Far more people in the Dales rely on tourism for their livelihoods than rely on quarrying!
Please also encourage family and friends to object and forward this email as widely as possible. We’re aiming for hundreds of objections. If you’ve already objected to any applications, thank you, but please be aware two important new ones are listed below.
The four applications to object to are:
1. New Application NP/DDD/0214/0131
Proposal: Construction of saw shed for two stone cutting wire saws, crane and water recycling system. Please object if you don’t want the sound of stone-saws reverberating round the district.
2. New Application NP/DDD/1013/0973
Proposal: That the company be allowed to not comply with 17 of its commitments to restore the land back to its original form before taking out more stone. If you think the quarry’s an eyesore, you’re right – the company’s failed to meet any of its restoration and re-landscaping commitments and now wants that failure made legal.
3. NP/DDD/0606/0613
Proposal: A single wire saw and compound. The company has already begun work on this installation without planning permission but has been stopped – temporarily at least – by a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ with the Peak Park. Note this is in addition to the first application above – are we to have three stone saws? Or is the company going for a belt-and-braces approach – if they don’t get two saws, they might get one?
4. NP/DDD/0913/0818
Proposal: Relocation of the ugly black shed you can see from the quarry entrance. This is a retrospective application – the company moved the shed without permission from its previous site, where it didn’t have planning permission either.
How to object
Please object as soon as possible. The company planned to start stone-sawing after Christmas and is impatient at the delay caused by SADE getting involved. All these applications are likely to be put before the Planning Committee in March or April.
The easiest way to object is to visit the Peak District Planning Search page and click on the links against the individual applications. Scroll down the official-looking page where you’ll find a box inviting your comments. If there is more than one objector in your household, please make separate objections – numbers count. Don’t forget to include full contact details or your objection may be discounted.
If you’d prefer to write a letter, please include the relevant application numbers from the list above. Send your objection to:
The Minerals Planners,
Peak District National Park Authority,
Aldern House,
Baslow Road,
Bakewell DE45 1AE
It is our view at the Heritage Journal that the most invidious of these is application 2 in the list above, as this makes a mockery of any and all promises made in the past to ‘make good’ any damage to the environment. What good are agreements if they can be revoked at a later date? If you live, visit or work in the area please consider raising an objection to all these proposals.
4 comments
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26/02/2014 at 12:29
lanceleuven
This company sounds like a bunch of cowboys. Not being local, I can’t object myself, but I hope SADE are succeessful in their efforts.
26/02/2014 at 13:24
Alan S.
You could always object as a visitor/tourist to the area…
28/02/2014 at 13:36
lanceleuven
Thanks for the tip! I objected to application two as it seemed the one most apropriate to visitors.
05/07/2015 at 23:33
Christopher Young
There has to be a balance here. It has to be admitted that the topography of Stanton Moor is far from natural. Indeed, what makes it accessible and adds interest are the works of man from 4000 years ago to the present day. Though heavily disguised by the overgrowth of many trees in the past five or six decades or more, what is there is an industrial landscape. The access paths which we use are there because man needed to take out the stone he has won by hard graft, sweat, skill and huge ingenuity.
There would have many men co-operating to achieve this, with all the necessary craftsmen alongside – the blacksmith to keep the picks sharp and to forge new chisels and wedges. Underneath the moss and thick grass of the ‘ride’ winding up round the NW mid level, is a beautiful channel carved in the stone to bring water down to the blacksmith large cystern, for cooling the metal or swelling the pick handles. The base-plates for the crane swivels are numerous. All gone now, used elsewhere as the need arose – but picture the scenes and noises as you walk amongst the silver-birch trees in peace.
All around Stanton Moor were quarries making use of this special outcrop of gritstone amongst largely limestone areas to the south and north.
Similarly we have to admire and have pride in, as we stroll around Nelson’s Column, that Trafalgar Square is paved, not with neutral concrete slabs but with Derbyshire gritstone. Huge slabs, carefully cut and finished, transported by rail from Stancliffe Quarry opposite: Yet where is that quarry now? Covered and disguised by recent tree growth, the huge labours of a large force of men could easily be forgotten: yet what a commission that was – to pave the centre of the nation’s capital!
My childhood in Stanton Lees has two ‘sound’ memories: During the day the sound of the saws at Endcliffe Quarry, a comforting background to play, because Uncle Horace was up there overseeing the process and I could run up the hill to see him and ‘ Nid Holmes, ( a distant relative) who worked out the cube of the stones being sliced or sawn into large cylinders.
The other sound was the night-time thump of the large hammer-press down at Firth Derihon’s down near the railway sidings in the valley. Visitors wondered how we could sleep – but night after night through the years, the factory resounded – and on we slept.
I regularly camp at Barn Farm, Birchover, and have never been aware of the sound of the saws and machinery across the road, cutting up the stone. I doubt if anyone will hear the proposed saws at Dale View Quarry: There are no villages any where as nearby.
The quarry in question may look a big hole and a mess now – but so did all the others around Stanton Moor in their hey-day. Now you pass them by, hardly recognisable as the busy places they once were. None of them threatened the Nine Ladies or the burial mounds – but they gave employment and provided stone for houses and fine buildings near and far.
I do not think Stancliffe Stone are aggressive ‘cowboys’ and in thirty years their efforts will be historical, tree-covered contours. But, OK keep an eye on them to make sure they do stick to all agreements.
My grsndfsther quarried with pick and shovel. Modern machines can chew the landscape so quickly!