Magdalen (Workhouse) Quarry
The Oxfordshire Geology Trust held an open afternoon at the Magdalen (or Workhouse) Quarry on Saturday 23 July 2011. This disused pit is reached from the end of William Kimber Crescent.
It appears to be a relatively “modern” pit, as it is not shows on the 1876 map of Headington. The 1898 map (below) shows why it was known as the Workhouse Pit. According to Raphael Samuel’s book Village Life and Labour, it was the Corporation Pit in 1900, and was subsequently taken over by Magdalen College, hence becoming known as the Magdalen Pit. It was the last working quarry in Headington, only closing in 1949.
As the later maps below show (left 1921, right 1939), the quarry moved south as the stone in the original pit was exhausted.
The preferred layers of stone were known by stonemasons as the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd “Headington Hard”, and the “Hedgehog Course”.
The quarry is now a Nature Reserve and Site of Special Scientific Interest. The rocks exposed in the cliff face are of Upper Jurassic age, deposited c.140–150 million years ago. Whole fossils are quite rare here (unlike at Rock Edge), and fragments of shell ware more common.
