On Monday 1 February Lovell Stone Group took over the lease of Hartham Park Bath stone underground quarry, one of the major sources of Bath stone that has, until now, been operated by Hanson Bath & Portland.

Bath & Portland has said it plans to open a new portal to Hartham Park, but planning permission to do so has delayed the plans and the company has re-opened another of its underground quarries, Monks Park, from which it has already extracted the first blocks of stone.

Other sources of Bath stone are available from Bath Stone Group, which operates Stoke Hill mine, and Ham & Doulting, which extracts stone from Elm Park mine (a mine and an underground quarry are the same thing but traditionally the Bath stone quarrymen prefered to call their mines underground quarries).

There will be more about the moves in the next edition of Natural Stone Specialist magazine. You can find contact details for the producers under the British Stone heading on this website.