Mike Gardner looks at Cracken Edge Quarry
***DVO are hosting this year’s Midlands Champs at Chinley Churn on September 7th. Entries are open on The Start Kite.***
Chinley Churn is a prominent gritstone hill between the villages of Chinley and Hayfield in the Peak District. The summit is 457 metres (1,499 ft) above sea level. The hilltop ridge area is designated as open access land, following the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. The trig pillar on the hill was removed sometime after April 2024 – thought to be by the farmer. The trig pillar at the lower secondary summit further south is on private land.
Craken Edge Quarry (worked from at least 1640 until the 1900s) is designated a Regionally Important Geological Site. This is a large disused stone slate quarry. The quarry forms the dramatic crest of the hill. Through centuries of workings, the scarp edge of Chinley Churn has been dramatically shaped into steps. The main quarry face stretches for 1km and rises to at least 10m at its highest.
Below these sheer quarried rock faces are steps consisting of flat, stone-working areas with large spoil heaps and routeways, with slopes of spoil scree between. This rock is special because it splits beautifully into thin pieces perfect for flags and roof slates.
The History of Cracken Edge Quarry
The background…
Since the 14th century, the land around Chinley, or Mainstonefield as it was known, was used as farmland by the Abbey of Merivale.
In 1569, after the Dissolution, this land was divided into 40 portions, each known as a ‘neighbourship’. Each of the ‘neighbours’ then paid 5s 4d in rent. These neighbourships are interesting because they appear to be a system unique to Chinley and formed the template for land use and sale for the next 300 years – they are still referred to in recent land leases!
The quarry…
In 1628, a commission was written laying down the allocation of the neighbourships. Here, we have our first mention of the quarry. The commission includes the ‘slate breaks’ at Cracken Edge which were attached to the neighbourships. A ‘slate break’ was an apportionment of the hill crest, giving the owner the right to quarry the stone. Therefore, whilst 1628 is our first known date of the quarry, we can assume it was active before then, making it at least 400 years old!
Cracken’s hey day
By the 1700s the region had industrialised and the village of Chinley had grown. The Peak Forest Canal and the Tramway at Buxworth and Chinley were built between 1799 and 1806. In 1867 the railway came to the village. These developments greatly increased the potential for industrial output and export. The quarry yielded building stone but specialised in the production of paving and roofing slabs. Besides surface extraction, better stone at a greater depth was extracted by underground mining.
In its hey day, Cracken was sending 16,000 tonnes of Cracken stone by train every year! Cracken is a significant part of local history. It was an important resource and employer. Many local men and boys worked there and many of the houses in Chinley have been built, the floors paved and the roofs slated with Cracken Stone.
As concrete became cheap and accessible, the market for quarried slate reduced dramatically. The quarry eventually closed in the 1920s. Whilst no stone has been extracted here for 100 years, the quarry lies virtually unchanged and provides an educational and beautiful place to visit. The evidence of past activity is all around you at Cracken Edge. It is interesting to imagine all the activity and hubbub that must have been here when workers still came to break stone. A significant feature of Cracken Edge is the enormous piles of spoil and massive slabs of tumbled rock face.
Pieces like this show how the stone has been worked by an expert technique of wedging and hammering at the top of the face to prise whole sections of rock away. Quite well preserved on the site are the remains of a winding wheel. It was built in 1901 to make it easier to transport the stone from the hill side to the road. The accompanying railtracks ran right down the slope.
You can see the straight channel in the ground leading all the way to the road where the tracks used to be. The wheel was built by Frank and Alfred Kirkham. Unfortunately the wheel proved unsatisfactory because the wagons jumped the tracks and it wasn’t used for long.
Lying at the northern end of the quarry are the remains of a crane. This probably dates from the 19th and early 20th century and would have been used for lifting stones to be swung into new positions.
Across the whole quarry are at least 11 small drystone structures. These are quarrymen’s huts fashioned from spoil to provide storage and shelter from the often harsh High Peak weather.
There are noticeable ‘access routes’ leading from the main footpath to the sheer rock face.
This is where gaps were intentionally maintained or created in order to provide the quarrymen access to the quarry face. One of the main footpaths between Cracken Edge and Chinley is known as Sandy Lane. It used to be called Lea Lane and for a long time was the only route by which the quarrymen could transport stone. It was a hazardous journey with just a wagon and pony carrying huge amounts of stone down this steep and rocky lane.
A burial barrow (near the site of the now removed modern trig pillar) was reported in 1901 as the resting place of an ancient Celtic chieftain called Taro Trin (the Bull of Conflict), according to tradition.
This article first appeared in EMEWS The magazine of the East Midlands Orienteering Association No 297, Summer 2025.
