Bethel Quarry

Hill and Trecwn were completed, A third small working, Bethel Quarry in Bradford-on-Avon, was requisitioned from the Agaric Mushroom Company at the same time to supplement the unsatisfactory and widely dispersed surface warehouses in Bath used to store electronic and optical components. 

In October, 1939, the Admiralty negotiated leases on two other small Corsham quarries at Brocklease and Pickwick, together with Bethel quarry at Bradford-on-A von. The workforce of the Bath and Portland Stone Company, which owned virtually all the quarries in North Wiltshire, was then concentrated on stone extraction from the firm s remaining quarries at Limpley Stoke and from the west side of Spring Quarry, a 3,000,000 square foot area of workings containing some sixty miles of underground roadways below land between Corsham and Box. 

The move from Bethel Quarry in Bradford-on-Avon required an increase in floor space at Copenacre to 217,800 square feet, at an estimated additional cost of 100,000. After token opposition from the Treasury and the imposition of certain cost control conditions, work on the extension began on 21 July, 1942, and was finished by the year s end, when the quarry was officially opened as Royal Navy Storage Depot Copenacre. 

Space was required not only to accommodate naval anti-aircraft stores, RDF equipment and Fire-Control gear previously kept at Bethel Quarry, but also Asdic equipment stored in requisitioned garage premises in Walcot Street and St John s Road in Bath, and at Batheaston slaughterhouse. The bombing of Bath on the nights of 25 and 26 April,... 

With Copenacre now in service, the far from satisfactory accommodation at Bethel was quickly run down. like the other small quarries in Bradford-on-Avon, the two-and-a-quarter-acre Bethel Quarry in Frome Road was shallow and somewhat unstable. This potential instability, together with its relatively shallow overburden, meant that it was much... 

---

See also in sourсe #XX -- [ , ]

---