There has been a quarry in the Mountsorrel area at least since Roman times, which has influenced the life, soul and infrastructure of the village in all that time. In fact, if you travel north along Loughborough Road, after Wheat Close, on the right hand side, their exists 20 old quarry workers houses built in early Victorian times, in a perfectly straight line. They are, of course, all modernised now.
Whilst the origin of the name ‘Mountsorrel’ is still not understood fully, it is thought that the English nobility of the time named Mountsorrel after Montsoreau, a castle in France close to Fontevrault, where Henry II was buried. The name Mountsorrel is of Norman-French origin and is thought to have developed due to the close likeness of Montsoreau and Mountsorrel – both settlements sit on rivers, the Loire and the Soar respectively, and are overshadowed by surrounding hills.
A castle was built in 1080 by Hugh Lupus, but there is evidence of an earlier settlement in the area in the form of pottery fragments. A Roman villa is supposed to have existed on Broad Hill during the 4th century AD, the site of today’s quarry, as quarrying during the late 1800s revealed many artefacts including a preserved wooden bucket. However, the first recording of the village was in 1377, when it had a population of 156.
In 1151, Robert le Bossu, the Earl of Leicester and deputy to Henry II of England, who was the Justicar, or Chief Justice of the Peace for the area, acquired the tenancy of Mountsorrel castle. According to the historian Jim Bradbury, the acquisition of the castle by the Earl of Leicester was as a result of a ‘final concord of peace’ with Ranulf, Earl of Chester.
Mountsorrel castle was used as a bastion against King Stephen, and was subsequently destroyed in 1217 by the King’s men from Nottingham, branded “a nest of the Devil and den of thieves and robbers”. The future King Louis VIII of France had sent support in the form of 20,000 men to the besieged barons in the castle, but this force had failed to arrive in time to prevent the razing to the ground of the castle. All that remains of the castle today is a granite crag on Castle Hill. The hill is also the site of a memorial (by Shirley Harrison in 1926) to those who lost their lives in World War I.
As noted at the beginning of this article, the Mountsorrel Railway served the quarry to transport rock to Barrow upon Soar for distribution. By 1870 there were 500 employees. In 1872, the Mountsorrel Granite Company acquired the rights to quarry the area from the Broad Hill quarry, and a hospital had become established in the village to deal with those made ill by the dust created by the quarrying.
The quarry produces approximately 3 million tons per annum with reserves of 160 million tons of granite, making it in 1997 one of the top ten largest producing quarries in Europe. The quarry is blasted at 12.30 pm most weekdays, with a force that is felt throughout most of the village, as well as in some parts of Loughborough, Quorn, Swithland, and Rothley.
The quarry was run by Redland Quarries until its acquisition by Lafarge in the 1990s, and is now owned and managed by Tarmac.
The complete document, sponsored by Right at Home, Loughborough, can be downloaded below.
