Hand dressed stone all with good faces  - building inspirational walls has never been easier.

Stalbridge Quarries is a leading supplier of hand-crafted building stone, dry stone walling, garden walling, and paving, all of which is a type of Cotswold stone from its artisan stone quarry on the Somerset and Dorset border. 

This beautiful and highly durable natural stone is called Forest Marble, and is a much sort after Cotswold stone and has been quarried in the West Country and the Cotswolds for hundreds of years, for its building qualities. Whether the stone is used for building houses or landscaping gardens, it will add a heavenly natural colour and texture of idyllic country houses and villages. In the past the stone was only used in Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Somerset and Dorset, but today we export this heavenly stone throughout the UK.

Qualities of stone

The strength of the stone, its relative flatness, and the thinness of the the beds make the stone easy to work with. For the stonemasons, this means the work is easier, quicker and they are able to make the joints tighter - better job all round.  Furthermore, we work the stone, dressing it so that it is ready to use.  Minimising time and effort on site.

It is made up entirely of shells and fossils compressed for 140 million or so years, to produce one of the finest building materials available to man. Principally the stone is used for house building, extensions, renovations, retaining walls, natural stone walls, garden walls, paving, landscaping and even roofing. It is highly versatile.

It is extensively used for natural stone walls from Northamptonshire through to Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire (in the Cotswolds it is called Cotswold Forest Marble), Wiltshire, the Mendips, Somerset and Dorset, and has made for some of the prettiest villages and towns in England.

Today, due to its attractiveness and its building qualities, this traditional stone is being used increasingly in Devon, Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, London and throughout the UK in houses, buildings, and gardens creating inspirational natural structures.

Estate quarry

There has always being Forest Marble quarries on the Estate, providing stone to the local villages and houses.  The Estate is  a traditional farming and managed woodland Estate, which today is famous for its wild areas for conservation.

The limestone was first formed during the Jurassic period , some 140 million years ago when the tectonic plate holding Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire was at the same longitude as the Canary Islands today. The warm shallow seas produced an abundance of corals, shells and other marine life which died and built up huge deposits of calcium carbonate skeletal debris. Overtime, this has been compressed by succeeding layers of stone, to form the fossil rich and highly durable oolitic limestone we know today.

In 1799, William Smith was compiling a geological map of the UK, and named the oolitic limestone, Forest Marble after the location of a Cotswold stone quarry to be found in the Wychwood Forest adjacent to Blenheim Park. William Smith had observed this pretty natural stone much in use in Bath and in the villages of Somerset, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, the Cotswolds and Wiltshire.   

Today Forest Marble has become iconic internationally with the pretty Cotswold villages such as Burford, Fairford, Cirencester, Malmesbury, Chippenham, Badminton, Sherston, Stow-on-the-Wold.  Although less well known, it has produced equally beautiful villlages in Wiltshire, Somerset and Dorset.  The stone varies slightly from one field to the next and is known by an array of different names of which Cotswold stone or Cotswold Forest Marble or straight Forest Marble are the most widely used.

Stalbridge Quarries is one of the last stone quarries left supplying Forest Marble in the West Country.  

Phone Richard Willment, the Quarry Manager, for the best prices on 01963 364200.

We make frequent deliveries of walling, garden stone, building stone and landscaping stone to Sherborne, Tetbury, Malmesbury, Cirencester, Cheltenham, Somerford, Northleach, Chipping Norton, Melksham, Fairford, Didmarton, Stow, Corston, Sherston, Burford, Stow-on-the-Wold, Shipton Moyne, Chipping Sodbury, Acton Turville, Badminton, Evershot, Bridport, Oxford, Yeovil, Bath, Wells, Shepton Mallet, Salisbury, Bristol, Bournemouth, Box, Beaminster, Mells, Devizes, Stroud, Cheddar, Neston, Bradford-on-Avon, Wraxall, Mendips, Woking, Cucklington, Bruton, Stourton Caundle,  Yetminster, Radstock, Southampton, Frome, Shaftesbury, Reading, Wincanton, Trowbridge, Swindon, Chard, Chipping Camden, Lacock, Dursely, Castle Combe, Chippenham, Bath, Hungerford, Poole, Dorchester, Long Burton, Corsham, Birmingham, Taunton, Basingstoke, London and throughout the UK.