Shaftesbury Sandstone Quarries (Lead authors: JT and WGT)
Quarries in the Shaftesbury Sandstone and Boyne Hollow Chert (Upper Greensand Formation). There were also mines in the Shaftesbury Sandstone underneath the town.
The recent quarry at Manor Farm, Melbury Abbas, quarried Melbury Sandstone (Upper Greensand Formation) from a field west of the farm. The Old Quarry is in the side of Melbury Down, and provided both Melbury Sandstone and the lowest beds of overlying Chalk.
19th century 6” OS maps of Shaftesbury and Melbury Abbas, showing some of the quarries that provided ‘Greensand’ from both the Shaftesbury Sandstone and the Melbury Sandstone. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland. From their website http://maps.nls.uk/os/6inch-England-and-wales/