Quarrying at Croft

The quarry at Croft c.1906. Photo courtesy of the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland.

Mr Swinfen: It was mainly self supporting Croft was, about the only thing you couldn’t get was a suit, you could get shoes, socks, you could get working trousers from the Co-op.

Interviewer: Do you think it was a mainly working class village with it being a quarry village?

Mr Swinfen: Very much so. I remember 45 horses being down the quarry. 45, yeah, we used to count the horses, go in the meadows around the works.

Interviewer: Did the quarry then sort of really dominate the village?

Mr Swinfen: Oh yes. As people, the managers, as the quarry got bigger the managers got greater and they started to build houses around. Up Croft Hill, Broughton Road, Harborough Road, they started to build away, the managers.

Interviewer: Can you remember it being quite so…

Mr Swinfen: Well, most of the work was done by hand those days. They had what they called a ‘Blonden’ [?], it was like a steeple at one end, a rope across the quarry, and fastened to a movable machine at the other end which transmitted across the quarry. And it used to pick these loads of stone up out the bottom and take them up and then they could drive it along this chain - they called that the ‘Monkey’ - they could tip that into this pit and that was all the dust we had at the time, but there wasn’t a lot of dust. I remember it falling down in 1938, killing one man, I remember that very well.

Interviewer: Were there many accidents at the quarry?

Mr Swinfen: I remember my dad telling me about a Mr Morton fell down to his death but on the whole it wasn’t too bad, some crushed thumbs and hammered thumbs and that, but it were all stone work.

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