Case Study - Kings Lynn Quarry - Pt 1

WBB MINERALS Kings Lynn Quarry is near the village of Leziate, Kings Lynn, Norfolk, situated approximately 4.5 km east of Kings Lynn and 3 km north east of the village of Middleton. The site is situated in a rural area that consists mainly of agricultural land, woodland, active and restored quarries.

Historical Background

Kings Lynn quarry (Joseph Boam) was established in the 1860’s. The original works despatched sand of a suitable quality for the manufacture of clear bottles and jars to Yorkshire with return deliveries of coal to East Anglia. Markets for glass sands in Yorkshire are still supplied today from Kings Lynn Quarry.

Quarrying was undertaken in the early days by hand loading into horse drawn carts, with the quarry workers being required to supply their own shovels. The horse drawn carts were replaced by a narrow gauge railway system.

As public demand necessitated production of clearer bottles, Joseph Boam installed a treatment plant in the mid 1930’s. The aim was to reduce sand imports from Europe by producing high quality UK based glass grade sands. This plant built at Kings Lynn became a very important national asset during the Second World War when sands could not be imported. Glass sands are now produced through modern processing facilities utilising attrition and acid leaching to remove iron and other compounds in order to meet strict customer requirements.

Other processing at the Kings Lynn site is the resin coating process. During the Second World War Johannes Adolf Cronin developed the shell process. This process has been operated at the Kings Lynn site since the 1950’s. Raw foundry sands were introduced to Kings Lynn in the 1950’s to complement the glass sand production. A resin coating sand plant was built in 1959 to produce high quality moulding sand for the foundry industry.

Today the Kings Lynn site is a major producer of high quality glass and foundry sands. Foundry sands are distributed worldwide, whereas the glass sands are supplied within the UK. In addition to sands for the production of container glass, the site also produces sand for the manufacture of float (flat) glass.