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Kingsdown Quarry also commonly known as Swan
Mine is a small bath stone quarry lying under the hillside along
the road from Bathford to Kingsdown. The Main entrance to the quarry
is opposite the Swan Inn which was once the Quarry managers house,
the inn its self is held to the hill side by great iron chains anchored
ito the buried workings of the quarry itself. Kingsdown Quarry was
producing stone as far back as 1833 when it featured in a geological
survey of the area.
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The main entrance to the quarry today is a narrow
crawl through a lean too tunnel built to protect the remains of
the original quarry entrance which collapsed in 1998. Once through
the entrance the tunnel opens out before an another crawl to avoid
an unstable looking roof fall and then a second below an over hanging
bolder then the quarry opens out. The quarry itself is fairly small
consisting of a number of dead end passage ways which are relatively
untouched.
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Kingsdown was never modernised it was never fitted
with a rail system all the stone it produced was hauled out by
pit pony's hauling wooden carts. Deeply ridged cart tracks can
still been seen in many of the quarry's tunnels and places the
horses hoof prints can still be seen. Throughout the quarry are
remains of quarryman's tools, a stone carved horses water trough
and at the end of one of the most remote tunnel stands a intact
crane though it is unstable condition.
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on the way out of the quarry a lower series of tunnels can be reached
through a letterbox slide into a narrow twisting passage which leads
to window in the rock and then a final squeeze through a slot exit
at the foot of the hillside.
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