ABERDEEN GRANITE INDUSTRY 97 
As long ago as 1764 the characteristic qualities of Aberdeen granite 
attracted the attention of engineers and surveyors and it was specified 
by the contractors for paving the streets of London. We learn from 
Kennedy’s Annals of Aberdeen, published in 1818, that quarrying opera- 
tions for this purpose were commenced on ‘ the rocks on the sea coast 
of the lands of Torrie’ and the stones were transported to London. 
A stone trade, for supplying the demands of London, was thus established 
in Aberdeen and carried on for many years and was ‘ productive of 
advantage not only to the town and the county, but to the shipping 
belonging to the port. .The landed proprietors availed themselves of the 
demand for stones, and got rents for their quarries far beyond their 
utmost expectations. But independent of this circumstance, these 
undertakings employed a number of poor labourers, and brought many 
people from the north, who found constant work at these quarries.’ 
Between 1780 and 1790 as many as 600 men were employed in the 
Aberdeen quarries. For the year ending July 1, 1821, the quantity of 
granite stones exported was 41,000 tons, the value of which was upwards 
of £40,000. 
From an agricultural survey of Aberdeenshire by Dr. James Anderson, 
published in 1794, containing a valuable chapter on the minerals of the 
county, one gathers that the pick and wedge were then the principal 
tools used in quarrying. For ordinary mason work the stones were 
used with very little dressing, but for the fronts of houses and finer 
works they were usually smoothed so as to form what is called ashlar 
work. ‘There are still several old buildings and erections in the city and 
neighbourhood, for which all the stones were quarried and dressed by 
the old-fashioned scabbling pick and the lighter dressing pick: e.g. the 
nave and west front of St. Machar’s Cathedral ; the chapel of St. Mary 
under the East Kirk of St. Nicholas ; the granite monument erected by 
the Town Council in 1637 in a field near Pitmedden to the memory of 
Mr. Duncan Liddell, an eminent scholar of his day ; and Union Bridge, 
the keystone of which was driven in 1803. 
Although, in the early years of the nineteenth century, granite had 
‘brought gold to Aberdeen,’ the tools then used both for quarrying and 
dressing the stone were similar to those used by the Egyptians three 
thousand years before. 
About 1795 machinery was first employed in quarrying granite. By 
this means Aberdeen supplied granite in large blocks for constructing 
the Admiralty docks at Portsmouth and other similar undertakings. 
For several years the machinery was very crude and little progress was 
made until the introduction of steam power. 
In quarrying Aberdeenshire granite great difficulties had to be overcome. 
Almost invariably the granite lies beneath a covering of hard boulder 
clay of varying thickness and rock of an inferior quality, the quality of 
‘ the stone usually improving with the depth. The removal of the over- 
burden is not only unremunerative but costly. The quarry as it is 
developed assumes the form of a conical pit with a small floor. The 
granite is removed by boring and blasting and all quarried materials have 
to be hoisted to the surface. 
G 
