Context 154 - May 2018

18 C O N T E X T 1 5 4 : M A Y 2 0 1 8 As part of the cathedral’s extensive works to replace or recondition stone on the east gable, four new corbel stones were carved from Salcombe stone from Dunscombe Manor Quarry. One was the Exeter Chiefs Club emblem. (Photo: Chris Sampson, Exeter Cathedral) Building stone used in the construction of Exeter Cathedral’s east gable elevation (Photo: Exeter Cathedral) development within these designations, so the planning balance would rest on the actual impacts on these natural designations. A further consideration was the impact on the amenity and the business of the holiday caravan park within which the quarry is situated and by whom the access to the site is controlled. Before any application was made it was necessary to discuss the principle of the proposal with the main stakeholders. In relation to site access, the cathedral authorities had already discussed the proposal with the caravan site owners who controlled the access. They were supportive of the project, so long as the extraction periods did not adversely affect their holiday business. This meant that the subsequent application restricted the working periods to outside the main tourist season. The county council approached the AONB team, the district council conservation adviser, English Heritage and Natural England to assess the levels of information that needed to be in any planning application andwhether therewould be support for the proposal in principle.These discussions were positive.The proposal was also screened for the likelihood of requiring environmental impact assessment, given its location within a sensitive area. The application, submitted in 2013, was based on a limited extraction area within the quarry to reduce the need for clearance, and an extraction limited to five cubic metres a year, which was the amount the cathedral judged to be sufficient and which could be extracted using hand-held tools.The main impacts of the proposal were the limited clearance of vegetation needed to access the chosen working face and the potential impact on the adjacent caravan park business. It was necessary to condition access and clearance to times when there would be minimal disturbance to bats and breeding birds, all of which had colonised the site during the years it was unused, and to protect the amenity of the holiday park during the main season.The planning application received no objections, and planning permission was granted for a 10-year period within six weeks of the planning application being made. Unfortunately, because there had been very little access to the quarry during the preparation and submission of the 2013 application, it became apparent when the vegetation was cleared that the approved working plans constrained the extraction to take place from a sheer face, and not from the historic working benches. The red line of the original application, which had been drawn very tightly to reduce the application fee, was not flexible enough to encompass the area that the cathedral wished to work. It was therefore necessary to make a new planning application to ensure that the correct working area was covered by the planning permission. As a part of the second application, the cathedral also updated the method of working. The original proposal had been to use a hand-held, diamond-tipped saw to remove individual blocks for specific projects. However, the use of a carbide-tipped chainsaw meant that the whole year’s extraction could take place in one day. The stone will be stored offsite until required by the cathedral masons. It was possible to grant this second consent for a further 10 years to 2027 within five weeks of the application being submitted. No new issues had arisen from the original consent being granted in 2013, and new planning policy and guidance continued to support proposals of this nature 4 . Beer Quarry Caves Another local stone used in the cathedral is Beer stone, a fine, pale, hard chalk also found in East Devon. This has been used for some of the cathedral’s sculptures and window tracery. Beer stone is soft and easily shaped for fine carvings when freshly extracted, but once exposed to air it hardens, although it is still not as durable as Salcombe Stone for external uses. When the cathedral authorities approached the county council in respect of the Salcombe Stone, they also submitted a planning application to source Beer stone. It might have been expected that the cathedral would approach the operator of the main commercial Beer stone quarry.This had been worked by a large aggregate supplier for crushed chalk but had ceased operation in the late 1990s. This was partly due the underground workings being a significant bat roost, which had led to its designation as a special area of conservation under the European Habitats Directive.