Southowram: Manufacturer bids to extend sandstone qaurrying at Yorkshire site

Approval will allow the company to keep extracting up to 70,000 tonnes of sandstone per year, planners have been told.

Marshalls Mono Ltd describes itself as the UK’s leading manufacturer and supplier of natural stone and concrete hard landscaping products for gardens, driveways and other built environments.

The long-established Elland-based company has applied to Caldedale Council for a 2.3 hectare northern extension to Pasture House Quarry, which is at Church Lane, Southowram.

The proposals are merely to continue the extraction at current output levels, according to supporting papers with the application.

A supporting heritage statement from consultants Silkstone Environmental says the proposed extension area consists of one field separated by dilapidated dry stone walls and parts of two fields to the north of the current operational area which lie within a larger allocated mineral site in the Calderdale Development Plan.

The permission will allow continued extraction of raw block sandstone which is transported approximately 1km to the company’s Brookfoot Works for cutting and processing into products.

Quarry voids are back-filled with inferior quality mineral and shale overburden and imported inert materials to enable the site to be restored back to original ground levels for restoration of the site back to wildflower hay meadow, together with an area of tree planting, says the statement.

Sandstone is lifted using a 360 hydraulic excavator and no blasting would be required, say the papers.

Highway engineers Paragon Highways in a supporting statement say proposals are to excavate minerals from the site over a period of four to five years.

Extraction of minerals will be at the same output as that previously approved under planning approval reference 21/00985/MIN, and will therefore provide a continuation of current operations at the site.

The highways statement argues that the site is readily accessible via existing roads and routes, these do not suffer from any defects that could contribute to an excessively high accident frequency, that efficient and suitable access to the site is already established from Church Lane.

The trip generation of the proposals will not result in a significant residual impact on the local transport network, according to the statement.

Part of the route has seen two collisions but none within the vicinity of the proposed access points and none involved HGVs associated with the quarry, says the highways statement.

The existing quarry operations extract up to 70,000 tonnes of sandstone per year, and the proposals are merely to continue extraction at current output levels.

The quarry extracts and transports sandstone eight hours per day, between 7.30am and 3.30pm, and this arrangement would continue for the proposed extension area, say the engineers.

The current level of HGV journeys – 25 HGV movements per day, averaging around three HGVs per hour – would remain the same, according to the application.