Seend Ironstone Quarry and Road Cutting

rdf:langString Seend Ironstone Quarry and Road Cutting

rdf:langString Seend Ironstone Quarry and Road Cutting (grid reference ST937610) is a 3 acres (1.2 ha) Geological Site of Special Scientific Interest at Seend in Wiltshire, England, notified in 1965. The site contains facies of Lower Greensand containing specimens of fauna not found elsewhere. Mining rights were leased just below the Bell Inn before 1856 where 10,000 tons of iron ore were mined. The quarried brown hematite ore was then smelted in blast furnaces from 1860 by Wlliam Sarl with three furnaces fifty feet high, and employing 300 men. Iron smelting continued intermittently until the mid 1870s, after which only quarrying was carried on. The ironworks were dismantled by 1890. The ironstone continued to be extracted and shipped for smelting elsewhere until after World War 1. From around the 1920s the iron ore was calcined at the site for shipping and its iron oxide used in purification plants for town gas. The works appear to have continued functioning into the 1960s.