Born in 1899, Charles Deacon trained as a turner and fitter at Guy Motors and Sunbeam in Wolverhampton and lived in Springfields. As a young man, he was in the habit of taking long walks, which one day took him to Brewood.
This led to the discovery of the Sandbeds; while walking around the area he noticed that underneath the soil was pure sand. His discovery was to change the course of the area and his own life. He began quarrying the site in 1930 – all hand-loaded by a team of men with shovels. The Sandbeds covered an area of around 40 acres between Horsebrook Lane and Engleton Lane and sand was quarried from around 26 acres of that. By 1936 Mr Deacon was fully established and had his own office and yard in Nine Elms Lane, Wolverhampton, employing at least eight men at his peak. The sandstone in Brewood actually originates from Iceland, with long, unrounded grain. It was completely pure, needing no screening or washing. It was referred to as ‘fat sand’ because it was easy to mix and absorbed the water.
Mr Deacon employed his younger brother David and together they dug down vertically as far as the water table. Mechanical loading was introduced in the 1950s and the plan was to fill in the quarry by tipping, and then replace the top soil to return the land to agriculture. Unfortunately, Mr Deacon died suddenly at the age of 62 from a heart attack and the work came to a halt in the 1970s. In 2010 after some years of work to improve the area which is still ongoing it was opened up as an area to the public with pathways put in.