For the first time in 50 years, freshly quarried Box Ground Bath stone, the most durable of the Bath stones, is available again, thanks to Hanson Bath & Portland – and the market for it is beginning to expand.

Two years after NSS visited Hanson Bath & Portland’s Hartham Park underground quarry to witness the new shaft which had just been sunk 8m into the floor of the quarry to reach the lower beds of Box Ground Bath stone, the stone is now in full production. It is the first time in 50 years that freshly quarried Box stone has been available – and with 500m³ of it now out of the ground there should be enough to satisfy any project.

The reserves have proved to be every bit as good as expected, as verified by a full suite of tests carried out by BRE. And with CE marking now compulsory, both Box Ground and the Hartham Park Bath Ground stone products are fully CE marked.

The Bath Ground is still the best seller from Hartham Park but the level of interest in Box Ground has gradually increased as awareness among clients and architects that it is available again has spread.

Hartham Park was visited by a representative of the new Rivers & Canals Authority who saw the NSS report in 2011 about Box being back in production. As a result, Box is now the preferred stone for restoration work on the Kennet & Avon canal network around Bath.

Hartham Park also had a visit from the British Geological Survey, which told Operations Manager Shahram Hakimzadeh that Box Ground from the underground quarry would be listed as an available stone on the Strategic Stone Study online database produced by BGS for English Heritage.

There have already been two major projects carried out in the Box stone – St Anthony’s College in Oxford and a private stately home where even the Bentleys were garaged in Box stone buildings.

Like a lot of British stone producers, Bath & Portland has reason to be glad that some of the World’s richest people like living in the UK and are willing to spend freely on building and extending their homes. Such projects have helped protect jobs at Bath & Portland, where none of the 28 employees, apart from the trainees, have worked for less than 15 years.

Hanson UK, which Bath & Portland Stone is part of, adopts a systematic and integrated approach to all aspects of its business and is committed to full compliance with the requirements of BES 6001, ISO 9001,

ISO 14001, BS 18001 and CE certification marking schemes relevant to its products.

It is a measure of Hanson’s confidence in its dimensional stone business that as part of its sustainability policy it has re-equipped Hartham Park with the latest machinery, including the £400,000 Atlas Copco ST7 Scooptram underground loading shovel pictured in the underground quarry on the previous pages. It was part of a £650,000 investment at the quarry to bring the plant up to the latest standards of safety, fuel efficiency and emissions.

Although Bath & Portland produces its own Bath stone (it sold its Portland quarries in 2004 to the current owners, Portland Stone Firms) it also processes other limestones at its substantial factory in Keynsham, Bristol.

Between them, the two sites supplied the stone to four of the projects honoured in November’s Natural Stone Awards – Williamstrip Park for interiors, Orchard Gate (pictured right) for traditional masonry, the World War I memorial at Prestbury in the craftsmanship category and Christchurch College in repairs & restoration.

The Awards illustrate the wide range of stone products that are made by Bath & Portland as well as being a source of great pride to Shahram and his colleagues.

They are also proud of their safety record. Hanson has a stated policy of causing ‘zero harm’ and takes it seriously, with an internal awards system to recognise the safety records of its many sites – most of which are, of course, on the aggregate side of the business. But Bath & Portland makes its contribution to that record and this year gained a Gold Standard Award at Keynsham for having gone seven years without an accident while Hartham Park gained a Silver Award for having gone four years without an accident.

Just lately, says Shahram, there have been signs of improvements in the markets, with housing a little downmarket of mansions showing the biggest increase in activity with more projects such as Bloor Homes’ development in the picturesque village of Norton St Phillips coming on stream.

At Norton St Phillips, Bath & Portland has supplied all the architectural stone, which includes door and window surrounds, quoins and the Doric columns that can be seen in the pictures above.

Visit the Hanson Bath & Portland website.