Quarrying in the Channel Islands
Each of the Channel Islands has its own distinctive history and
it is the intention of this series of articles to relate the
development of quarrying on Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Herm to
the emergence of Ronez Limited, a company of Aggregate Industries
Ltd, as the principal quarrying company on the Channel Islands.
The origins of Ronez Limited lie in the history of Jersey where
there may be evidence of commercial quarrying in a 1651 reference
to the Clos de Carieres in St John parish where almost two
centuries later the Ronez Quarries were established. when. the
Jersey Granite Company commenced operations there in 1869. A
successor to this company was acquired in 1911 by the Croft
Granite, Brick, and Concrete Company of Leicestershire.
In Guernsey there was a quarry at St Germain at the Castle in
1639 and in 1840 John Mowlem, founder of the famous civil
engineering firm, renewed the paving of Blackfriars Bridge with
setts of Guernsey granite. The repaving of London Bridge and the
Strand followed, and the granite for the Thames Embankment,
1862-74, also came from Guernsey. By the end of the 19th century
Mowlem's Guernsey operation had a steam crusher, and all the
paraphernalia of weigh bridges, storage yards, workshops, stables,
blondins, and offices, and in addition to the quarries they owned,
also had some they leased.
In the 19th century the ports of St Helier in Jersey and St
Samson in Guernsey were important for the export of paving stones
and chippings to the English mainland and by the early 1900s the
Ronez quarries had acquired their own jetty, crane, mooring buoy
and were on occasion loading three ships or more with
aggregate.
19th Century Channel Island census returns speak of quarrymen,
stone cutters, stone dressers, stone crackers, and stone miners, as
well as stone merchants, and as the demand for stone grew so labour
had to be imported. Normandy and Brittany were obvious sources, but
so too were England and Ireland, and even Scotland. In 1886 the
Stone Crackers' Union was formed to defend the interests of
quarriers and in 1911 it was superseded in Guernsey by a branch of
the United Union of Quarrymen and Settmakers. In 1937 it was
incorporated into the General and Municipal Workers Union which was
active through out the Channel Islands..
The German occupation of the Channel Islands from 1940-45 saw
the requisition of the islands' quarries. The quarry manager at
Ronez, because he was of British citizenship, was interned by the
Germans in Bavaria for the duration of the war. In Guernsey,
Mowlem's plant was brought back into use by the Germans. The
quarries on both islands were worked by slaves brought over from
mainland Europe by the Germans who built railways on both Jersey
and Guernsey to deliver the crushed stone and cement needed for
building Hitler's Atlantic Wall.
With the war over the quarrying on both islands had to undergo a
long and expensive process of reconstruction and several quarries
did not reopen; their rehabilitation being uneconomic. At Ronez
engineers came over from Croft to rebuild the plant and to build a
new jetty. This gave opportunities for rationalization and
technical advancement. Horses and carts and steam cranes gave way
to huge excavators, dumper trucks, and loading shovels. Electricity
took over from steam.
In March 1962 the Jersey Cement and Granite Co, Ltd.commenced
operations on Guernsey, thereby linking what was hitherto the
separate quarrying traditions of the two islands. This was don e by
the acquisition of he quarries at Les Vardes, Bordeaux, and Mont
Cuet.
In the following year, 1963, ownership of the Jersey Cement and
Granite Co Ltd was transferred from the Croft Granite, Brick, and
Concrete Company, to English China Clays Limited, and in 1966 in
Jersey Western and L'Etacq quarries were purchased. At the same
time, the Company extended its interests to Alderney, leasing land
there at the Arsenal. A year later it changed its name to Ronez Ltd
and in 1996 the companyit was acquired by CAMAS which in turn
merged with Bardon Aggregates to become Aggregate Industries, Ltd.
The story comes to an end for the present, when, in March 2005,
Ronez Limited, as part of Aggregate Industries, merged with the
Holcim Group, an enterprise of Swiss origin which since it began in
1912 has achieved global status.
On the left you will see a PDF link which Contains data
collected over time referencing information about Quarying in the
Channel Islands.