General introduction

Two former quarries that are now Sites of Scientific Special Interest

Magdalen Quarry (also known as the Workhouse and the Corporation Pit)
This is situated just to the west of Gladstone Road, off Willilam Kimber Crescent.

Rock Edge (formerly known as Crossroads Pit)
This is situated at the south-east corner of Windmill Road

Other former pits and quarries

Saccy's Pit or Horwood's Pit
On the site of the present Beaumont Alley. More information

Vicarage Quarry
This was opposite the vicarage in Quarry Road. More information

Blondin's Pit
On the site of Quarry Hollow and the adjacent play park, later known as Muntsie’s. More information

Clayhills Pit, also known as St Ebba's Pit
On the corner of Quarry Road and Old Road, now the site of Stansfeld Centre. More information

Harry Bear's Pit
This was on the east side of the Slade, 250 yards south of the junction with Old Road.More information

Mason's Pit
This was behind the Mason's Arms. More information

Six Bells Pit
This was outside the Six Bells pub. More information

Pound House Quarry
This was at Shotover Hill Place (the area at the east end of Old Road, which was in the ecclesiastical parish of Holy Trinity, Headington Quarry but in the civil parish of Forest Hill with Shotover). This may be the quarry with a pond which the poet Shelley loved. Thomas Jefferson Hogg’s memories of Shelley are quoted at length in Jackson’s Oxford Journal of 15 April 1899. He says that Shelley’s favourite walk was on Shotover Hill: “Any pool had a fascination for Shelley, and there was one special pond in an old quarry, on the left as we climb Shotover, which drew him like a magnet there. He would linger till dusk, reciting verses aloud, anon raising a vast rock and hurling it into the water, now making paper boats, and lingering in the face of a cutting north-east wind to watch their prosperous voyage to the other side.”

Hundred Acres Pit
In the late nineteenth century this was owned by Thomas White, the farmer at Wood Farm.
See this report in Jackson's Oxford Journal of 11 March 1899 on the inquest held at the Crown & Thistle into the death of Edward Morris (61), who was undermining the rock at this pit with a long-handled paddle for the purpose of bringing about a fall of rock by drawing out the sand when a large piece of stone fell on him and buried him alive.

Coppock's Quarry
This was to the west of the present Gladstone Road, to the south of the Magdalen Pit. It was closed in the 1880s. See it here in the “Stone in Archaeology” Database

Claypit at The Kilns in Risinghurst
There were brickworks to the south of Kiln Lane until the twentieth century, and the lake at C. S. Lewis's house is actually a flooded claypit.

Taylor's Pit
This was near Holy Trinity Church. In “Quarry Roughs” Raphael Samuel wrote: “At Taylor's Pit, the employer, an active Methodist, was very much in control with a regular group of men at work – 'four … five, perhaps, when they han extra big fall' – with Chass Cooper, a Bible-carrying ex-sergeant, as their foreman.”

Windmill Quarry
This appears to have been very near Crossroads Quarry at Rock Edge and would have been named after Headington's main windmill.

Jack Phillips's Pit

Jack Phillips's Pit
This was on the corner of Green Road and Quarry High Street, as shown on the 1921 OS map (right).

This is probably the plot of building land at Headington Quarry with stone pit attached (measuring one acre and five perches and with extensive frontages to two new streets) that Richard Pether sold to Mrs Phillips of Headington on 20 March 1893. It was still being worked in the twentieth century, although Raphael Samuel in “Quarry Roughs” records that Phillips had no regular workforce.