Pule inclines Traditional Cache
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At the top of an old quarry incline, with plenty to explore in the
nearby quarry.
There are 2 inclines rising from near the car park up to Pule
Hill.
The left hand gentler incline leads eventually to one of our other
caches, Pule Cross (GC103CB).
The steeper right hand incline leads straight up into the quarry,
taking you towards the cache site.
Nearby you can still see many of the old quarry workings.
Please be careful if you head into the quarry. There has been some
recent rockfall.
A third incline descends gently from near the cache to join up to
the other incline to the left.
Instead of descending down the 3rd incline, a short 30m climb from
the cache takes you up onto the top of the edge.
Little is known about the Marsden quarries. The quarry is shown on
the 1854 map, but not the inclined plane.
It would appear that Pule Edge was worked mainly during the second
half of the nineteenth century, though limited use may have been
made of it earlier. In its heyday it must have provided very large
quantities of stone – the huge blocks of undressed stone lying
unused on the quarry floor give some idea of the scale of its
production.
Quarrying was probably carried out with explosives, though wedges
were used to control the extent of splitting (one of these is still
visible in the main rock face).
At least one crane, whose base can still be seen, was used to haul
stone away from the working face, while others were used at the
loading bays at the top and bottom of the inclined plane, the
latter being one of the most instantly recognisable features on the
hill.
It was probably double-tracked (several sleepers still lie in
position), and had been built up of stone rubble taken from quarry
pits on its south side and from the main quarry itself.
Part of the winding mechanism for controlling carts can be seen in
the long loading bay at the top of the plane.
In setting out the incline the watercourse to Pule Hoyles had to be
covered over (though a culvert was probably provided so that water
could continue to flow).
Thus the incline clearly post-dates the canal works, and the fact
that the bottom loading bay was sited by the third of the third
turnpike points to a construction date after 1839.
The major building work around this time was, of course, the
Huddersfield and Manchester railway, which required great
quantities of stone for bridges, viaducts and so on.
It seems likely, then, that the quarry was opened up at this time
and probably continued to be used for domestic purposes when the
railway was completed.”
(The original railway was constructed between 1845 and 1849, though
additional tunnels under Standedge were built between 1868 and
1870, and in 1894.)
Information taken from Standedge Guide by Graham Keevil, Kirklees
Metropolitan Council Huddersfield 1986
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
haqre n ebpx pybfr gb gur ehvarq jnyy
Treasures
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