Foggintor Quarry

Foggintor Quarry, originally known as Royal Oak Quarry, was opened around 1820 and worked on and off through the nineteenth century. At its peak in the 1840s it employed more than 300 men, including blacksmiths, masons, carpenters and horsemen, with its own foundry, smithy, stables and powder store on site. In November 1858 a single ten-pound powder blast reportedly freed a block of granite over 1,000 tons in weight, big news at the time.

Stone cut here left the moor on the Plymouth & Dartmoor tramway and travelled a long way from it: it built much of neighbouring Princetown, supplied granite for the Plymouth Breakwater, and provided stone for Nelson's Monument in Trafalgar Square and the statue of William IV in the City of London. Some of it never made it that far at all: unused corbels still lie abandoned beside the tramway near Swell Tor Quarry, cut for a job that, for reasons nobody now remembers, never happened.

The quarry closed in the early twentieth century, leaving the flooded pit, cut faces and spoil heaps seen today, including the huge waste tip known locally as Big Tip. Etched stone footings still mark where rails once carried granite blocks out of the ground, and the chimney keeps watch over all of it.