The History of Isles Quarry East
Borough Green is literally infested with quarries. Stangate Quarry, Kinghill Quarry, Borough Green Quarry, Stanley's Quarry, and Isles Quarry were all ragstone, but now landfilled. Isles and Stangate grew and developed Tarmac, concrete and filler plants, and associated engineering companies like Fluostatic, Arcontrol and ARC Engineering.
From 1921 tipping skips were shunted about by small "locos" running on a narrow gauge railway until 1956 when they were replaced by dump trucks. These locos were often driven by young lads, who weren't strong enough to work on the stone. In those days ragstone was predominantly broken and loaded by hand, and as far as we know, the last surviving sledge man in Isles Quarry was Big Jim Allingham. When I worked for ARC, Peter Bance, an older quarryman, who used to be a "loco-boy", used to regale me with tales of the Chittenden and Simmons days..and the Sentinel Steam Wagons
The picture below is a 1920's shot looking north at the southern spoil tip of Borough Green Quarry, later named Isles Quarry East. This is virtually where quarrying began in BG. The road in the foreground is Basted Lane, leading to Basted Paper Mill. People today think this is pristine natural woodland : little do they know what is under their feet !!
Only 40% of the material extracted in Borough Green was a hard limestone, and the balance a soft limestone called hassock, so quarrying generated almost more waste than the stone they dug up in the first place, which is why there are so many spoil heaps.
There were also sandpits, Ightham Sandpit supplying Sevenoaks White Brick, and later H+H Celcon. Hall's Sandpit, later operated (badly) as a landfill site by Cemex. Joco Pit operated for sand and then landfill by John Naylor. Borough Green Sandpit, curiously mostly in Platt, was operated by Dennis Smith, and then Roger Body. Platt Industrial Estate was built on the remains of a brickworks that closed when the clay ran out, but clay was excavated to the north by Rugby Cement for their Cuxton Works.
Below is a picture taken in the 1920s from the south looking at the Isles Quarry as shown in the 1938 map. In those days, whilst the stone was carted to the crusher by loco, it was still quarried and loaded by hand. Jim Allingham was the last known villager to have wielded a sledge hammer breaking rocks here. If you look carefully in the foreground you can see the end of the tramway, with a siding off to the left with a loco skip waiting to load.
