History

The name BREEDON derives from the celtic word 'bre' for hill and the Anglo Saxon word 'dun' for hill and evidence of human activity on the hill dates back to at least the 1st century BC.

In the 1930's, quarrying at Breedon was carried out by manual labour - initially with men using picks and shovels who hewed the stone from the rock face. Tubs were then filled manually by a quarry worker and a young lad with his pony would pull the tub along the rails to the stone crushers (known as Crackers). There it was crushed, screened and fed into hoppers according to size. This was very strenuous work for both the tub filler and the pony pulling the heavy load and the men filling the tubs were paid as piece workers. There were some 20 ponies or so and a similar number working at Cloud Hill and the ponies were stabled at Breedon next to the quarry.

The two lime kilns at Breedon used to keep many local people employed for many years, as the stone quarried from Breedon and Cloud Hill is a chemical form of calcium carbonate, rich in Magnesium and when heated to high temperatures it produced lime, a valuable building material to mix with cement for building purposes and has a huge benefit to soils and grassland, hence widely used by farmers and gardeners.  

The quarry looks very different these days...................

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