Hollington is one of Britain’s great stones and the new owner of Staffordshire Stone’s Quarry Bank source of the stone aims to make sure it stays that way with investment in the quarry and works

There’s a feeling of renewed optimism at Staffordshire Stone’s Hollington Quarry. They have just been awarded the contract by Moss Construction to supply their Red / Mottled Hollington sandstone for Warwick University’s Butterworth Hall; Thomas Vales have awarded them the supply contract for the limestone detailing of the new Teaching Block & Boarding House at Old Swinford Hospital; Burleigh Stone have asked Staffordshire Stone to work alongside them in Liverpool and the Wirral.

They have made five pinnacles for St Mary’s Church in Nantwich that are being fixed by main contractors Maysand, and they are supplying stone for the repair of a church in Great Gate, just down the lane from the quarry. This month (March) another church project was confirmed and they won a landscaping project in Warrington to return to an area where they have not supplied stone for many years.

These are just some of the projects that are following hot on the heels of the supply of finished Hollington stone for the restoration of Chester Town Hall, where the scaffolding has just come down to reveal the completed work.

Previous uses of the stone, that might also lead to future repair and restoration work, include the renovation of Bracken House, the listed building that was once the offices of the Financial Times, Liverpool and Lichfield Cathedrals, Alton Towers, Warwick Castle, and a string of stately homes and mansions.

And they are not just in the Midlands. Once the railways arrived in the 19th century Hollington stone started to be used all over the country, appreciated for its colours and, by masons, because it can be worked well, and enquiries have been received by Staffordshire Stone from as far apart as Scotland and Devon.

The quarry from which Hollington stone has been extracted since at least the middle ages and its associated works are also looking a lot smarter now. More than 100m3 of concrete has been poured at the site to stop visitors and employees from sinking into the mud. A new saw shed has been built and a Kolb Multistar KC1200 bridge saw / profiler has been installed while a new primary saw, a Kolb Topline KC-25, is just being commissioned. Blades for both are being supplied by Nimbus Diamond Tools.

They are also looking at putting an excavator saw into the quarry to cut block from the bed they are currently working that is 2.5m high. The aim is to reduce the level of waste.

The revitalisation of the business stems from their new owner, Martin Pankhurst, who bought the quarry at the start of last year.

Martin runs a successful stone landscaping materials supply company nearby called Stone Valley, which sells imported stone products, and a property development company that used Hollington stone in some of its barn conversions.

He knew Staffordshire Stone were associated with William Sapcote & Sons, so when he heard they were in receivership he approached the receivers about taking over the quarry.

The deal was made more complicated than it might have been because the mineral rights were owned by someone else and yet another party was involved as the owner of the land. Martin bought the quarrying and processing operation and the mineral rights on 26 acres – which should yield ample stone for a generation or two.

“It was an opportunity to get a dimensional stone quarry – that doesn’t come up very often because most of them are family owned,” he told NSS.

He says the operation had been allowed to run down. His aim is to build it up again, and the investment he has already put into it is clearly doing that. “My aim at the moment is to stabilise it, make it profitable and then look at where we can go with it.”

While not wishing to tempt providence, he says the recession does not seem to be hitting the quarry at the moment and orders are continuing to come in.

Fortunately, the stone has been used for many prestigious buildings over the centuries throughout the Midlands and further afield, which has resulted in demand for it for looking after those buildings.

Running the business on a day-to-day basis are Nick Rymer and Phil Barnacle, Nick on business development and Phil making sure the stone is supplied.

Both Nick and Phil have both run their own businesses previously. Phil is a highly regarded stonemason – although he says he is not as good as his father, Rubin, who was “a legend”, or grandfather, Bert, who taught Rubin and his other four sons.

Nick says it is a combination of the quality of the stone, Phil’s knowledge and expertise in winning and working it combined with the skilled and dedicated team working with him, and the capital that has been put into it by Martin Pankhurst that will make the enterprise a success. “You just can’t fail… well, you can fail, but it’s such a mix of positives,” he says, adding: “What’s also important is putting in place a five or 10 year strategy and sticking to it.”

He says they have identified various sectors of the market – historical properties, domestic, commercial, landscaping and local authorities – that they want to target, and not only with their own Hollington stone.

It is their aim always to supply to the deadlines of customers, which the new saws should enable them to do. But in order that the saws and the company’s three masons (in addition to Phil) and another seven people working in the quarry and workshops are kept fully employed, they will process any commercially available British stones for contractors – such as the limestone going to Old Swinford Hospital. Phil says sawing stone for contractors is good business.

They have also identified two further sources of British stone on which they hope to be able to offer exclusivity, whether or not they get involved in the extraction of it. A green/grey gritstone is expected to be the first to come on stream and could take Staffordshire Stone into a new area for them of flooring and paving.

The new focus of the business on customers and the future has already brought results. Nick says when he came into the business just after Martin had bought it there may have been a month’s work on the books at most. Now they have work for six months and are desperate to get the new Kolb primary saw up and running to meet demand and take the pressure off an old Portuguese frame saw that came with the business.

The new saws are phase one of the development of the company. Phase two was laying the concrete to tidy up the site. Phase three is a new building coming off the sawing shed to rehouse the masons in more comfortable accommodation than the 1950s sheds and garages they currently work in and improve the flow of work through the site. Phase four will be more saws and possibly a CNC workcentre, although they say that will not be for another two years.

He accepts you have to be mindful of the recession, but says: “We’re in recession now and our order book is still growing. We’re out there being very proactive. We want to drive the business and make sure we can get our share of the market that’s there. There are huge opportunities in this industry and we aim to make the most of them. This is not the old Staffordshire Stone. This is something different.”

They have registered with the Olympics to try to pick up whatever they can of the billions being spent on the Games and are actively getting their name out among conservation groups and architects, local authorities for town centre schemes and listed buildings that still seem to be going ahead, other listed structures such as railway bridges and locks on canals, and top end private work where there are people who prefer the idea of stone and mortar to Icelandic banks.

Wherever Staffordshire Stone are supplying materials they will contact all the architects they can identify in the surrounding area to introduce themselves, pointing out that the stone comes from them for that particular project and that they could supply others. “You have to get out there otherwise you are in your own little world and that’s the time that things can go wrong.”

It is paying dividends, but there are aspects of the stone market that frustrate Nick. “I go into restoration projects and see them using red Chinese sandstone. That’s wrong. Why is it allowed?”

But whatever obstacles they might face, Staffordshire Stone believe they are in a better position than they ever have been to make the most of the opportunities that arise. Nick says: “We don’t have to be the biggest, but we have to be the best at what we do."