The best part of these woods were the old quarry, right at the top of the valley opposite our house.
Steven Newport Supplemental
I have to say I am surprised that my Dad never really wrote anything on this given how much he loved this place! I guess he never got the time, which is a great shame. However, I remember him talking about it, and I have my own memories of it with which I will endeavour to paint a picture.
The Quarrry was just that, a quarry in the limestone hill; dug to excavate the Much Wenlock Limestone for use in the iron smelters below, along with the production of tiles and other ceramics. Coalbrookdale not being far from here. This limestone dates to the Siluriuan period, 423 to 427.4 million years old (Wikipedia).
One of the things my Dad told me about was the great pleasure he took in fossil hunting here; breaking open stones to see plants and creatures that had never been seen by a human being before, and had not see the light of day for so many million years.
When he first took us, as a family, I remember walking through the woods (with my grandfather, Cutherbert Newport, litterally skipping through the woods). The trip to the Quarry was a trek, and you fought down into it but the space itself was open, and I remember warm sunshine. Two concrete platforms stood side by side; presumably to load vehichles of some form, to take the ston down into the valley below.
The big thing though, was the beautiful sense of being lone. My Dad talked of making bows and arrows as a kid and running and playing throughout the woods; must have been wonderful for a child from war battered London.
I visited it a couple of times as a young man, being an avid geology student, and was on the fossil trail. Resting on the side of the Quarry wall was a large table top size slab of linemstone, the top surface weathered well to reveal a mass of fossils. If I could have lifted it, I would have, but instead had to make do with breaking a corner off with my trusy new geology hammer.
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