For many years Harmers Wood was a little known wood on the back of Helsby Hill at the edge of Hill Road North. Barbed wire still ran along the front and the paths were narrow and overgrown. However, quite a few local people still used it for dog walking and the Helsby running club made use of it occasionally. People used it to walk across from the Helsby Hill side of the wood, over the top, round the wood and back. Climbers had also used the quarries for practice for many years,
One morning in March 2005, a “For Sale” sign appeared at the entrance. For the three ladies who met every morning to walk their dogs, this was disturbing news. The following week a meeting was held at Frodsham Community Centre to discuss what the two villages could do about the sale of both Harmers Wood and the wood on Frodsham Hill which was also for sale at the same time.
It was agreed at the meeting that although the Woodland Trust could take over management of the large wood on Frodsham Hill, Harmers Wood was too small for them to manage. So a small group of local people met that night and subsequently formed The Friends of Harmers Wood Trust. We obtained the relevant sale details from the estate agents.
The initial price was £32,000 but we were not the only interested party. A pistol shooting club wanted the quarry and a paint balling organisation wanted to use the wood for that purpose. We set up a parliamentary petition to bring the wood into public ownership and presented it to our local member of parliament, Mike Hall, with a view to it being presented at the House of Commons. Mike Hall was very supportive throughout the struggle to obtain the money needed.
Although the wood was officially private, the enclosing wire had long ago disappeared and nobody from Cholmondeley Estates had ever been to repair it. Therefore, we obtained witness statements from the requisite number of residents who had walked through the woods over a period of 20 years and sent the petition to the Cheshire Footpath Association to prove that the wood had been used by the public for at least that amount of time even though notionally it was privately owned.
After a lot of negotiations with the Estate Agent for Cholmondeley, and after also writing to The Right Honourable the Marchioness of Cholmondeley, it was agreed that if we could raise the money we could buy the wood on the condition that it was to be kept as a wood in perpetuity. As this was our sole aim, we readily agreed but it was another two years before we could raise the money to purchase the wood.
We applied to the Heritage Lottery Fund but it took us months to fulfil their requirements. We had to write a constitution, we became both a company and a charity, wrote a business plan and opened a bank account. Econet, Cheshire County Council, Vale Royal and Mersey Forest, Helsby Village Society together with collections round the village all helped to reach our goal and eventually we received a significant grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. We purchased Harmers Wood on 7th June 2007. Altogther it had taken 2 years 3 months!
As part of the conditions of donations form the Heritage Lottery Fund we were required to find out as much as we could about the history of the wood and in particular why there were four quarries within its boundaries. We spent a lot of time at the Records Office in Chester going through every bit of correspondence we could find from the Cholmondeley estate to fill in any gaps in the history of the wood, together with local stories. Once we had purchased the wood we had to start on the work required to fulfil the requirements of the Heritage Lottery.
The quarries were all full of garden waste, old tyres, scrap metal, building material waste and so on. It cost thousands of pounds to clear. These quarries were then fenced for safety, any dangerous trees were felled, a barrier put up at the front entrance and the car park enlarged.
Harmers Wood is unusual in that it has four quarries within its boundaries. The four quarries date back 200 years when sandstone was excavated by hand. The stone was used in the local buildings around Helsby. The formation of the sandstone under the wood is from the Triassic period between 225 and 190 million years ago.
From research at Chester Library looking at the original letters and documents in the archives, the story can be told of Ben's Quarry - near the centre of the wood. On 15th March 1830, Benjamin Morris, a builder from Alvanley, approached Mr Jones of Cholmondeley Estate requesting permission to open a quarry in the wood.
The land around the wood at that time was farmed by a tenant farmer called Cobbe. It would take some time before negotiations would be completed to allow the stone to be cut. In December 1830, Benjamin wrote to Mr Jones stating that stone cutters would not work for less than 4 shillings a day. He set out the quantities needed to be cut to make a living:-
"24ft per cutter - 168 feet per day - 1008 feet per week which was worth
25 pounds 4 shillings 0 pence."
On 12th March 1831 Benjamin finally made an agreement with Jones for the renting and working of a stone quarry to commence on 25th March 1831. Benjamin agreed to rent a crane with a gang of 7 men to work the quarry and to pay the Marquis of Cholmondeley the sum of £54 per year made in two six monthly instalments. The same amount would be made for the same size of crews if he wished to expand the operation.
The quarry was stipulated to be 12 feet 7 inches x 16 feet 5 inches x 17 feet 3 inches. On 26th April 1832 all parties agreed to close the quarry but Benjamin was allowed to still remove the depth of stone already flayed.
On 30th June 1832, Benjamin contacted Mr Jones again stating that he had sunk a well and flayed a piece of rock adjoining the well but it was too expensive to continue since he required white sandstone and there was too much red sandstone. He requested that a surveyor, Mr Humphries come and look at the situation.
Between 1868-70 the Earl of Cholmondeley donated stone from Ben's Quarry free of charge to the "poor people of Helsby" to build St Paul's Church, the Vicarage and all the boundary walls. He also donated the land and £100 towards the construction with John Douglas as architect. A steam crane and seven men were used to cut the stone, which was then carted down into the village at the rate of 7 shillings per load with one horse or 10 shillings for two horse loads.
On land opposite the Harmers Wood car park, a cottage once stood called Toothill Beer House which sold watered down ale for the quarrymen to drink to quench their thirst since there was no running water available. Bits of pottery have been found including a large drinking vessel dating back to the late 1800s which still contained its original cork.
Two years later, on 25th March 1834 a new agreement was reached between Benjamin Morris, a stone mason for 14 years and his engineer Mr Edward Smith of Runcorn with Mr George Horatio May of Cholmondeley to quarry over another part of Harmers Wood measuring 4 acres. It is likely that the two quarries referred to in the agreement are those closest to Hill Road North. Quarry 'A' was for 26 years at £38. Quarry 'B' was for 33 years at £41 7s 6d The stone cutters needed the harder 'white' sandstone rather than the red which is softer. For each block of stone that was quarried there would be a large amount of waste from stone breaking and the chippings, as the blocks were squared off for building materials. This created the huge spoil heap, now a small overgrown hillock seen a short distance from Ben's Quarry.