A huge, gaping hole over a mile long is all that remains of Ashes Quarry where a small army of men toiled for over 70 years. Limestone was worked here by the Consett Iron Co until the 1940s. By then the cost and effort of removing the increasingly thick overburden above the limestone no longer made quarrying economic.

The Great Limestone forms the massive, 20m-thick vertical face in the quarry. The quarrymen called the uppermost layers of limestone, which were
interbedded with shale, the ‘Tumbler Beds’ as they tended to tumble down the working face. Above the Tumbler Beds are the ‘Coal Sills’ – thick beds of shale and sandstone along with the occasional thin coal seam. This formed the ‘overburden’ that had to be removed before the limestone could be worked.

Today, Ashes is just one of many disused quarries in Weardale and throughout the North Pennines. Some have been backfilled and returned to farmland, but many, like Ashes, have been abandoned and are now valuable places for wildlife.