Keady Quarries, Keady Road, Largyreagh, Keady Mountain, Limavady, Co Londonderry

Keady Quarries

A dramatic man-made intervention in the landscape situated just below the crest of Keady Mountain, near Limavady in County Londonderry. The quarry complex displays characteristics comparable to the new brutalist architectural movement of the 1950s, rendered in mass concrete structures of striking sculptural quality. The dramatic silhouette rivals the natural cliffs of Binevinagh to the north-west.

The main structure, constructed between 1940 and 1959, is a rough concrete cube resembling a Sphinx, built in five pours to a height of 15 metres. Three sloping concrete fins, each 9 metres high, project from the front (west) elevation like paws. Two small openings appear on the west face. Rusted steelwork connects the tops of the fins, which have no openings to their sides. To the south, three concrete walls step down from the apex, formerly supporting a chute which has since been removed. To the north stands a second major structure: a rectangular concrete trough, three pours high, set into the hillside so that only the west face is exposed. Four concrete fins, two pours high, support this blank box. Further north lie the remains of single-storey office buildings with concrete block walls and corroded tin roofs. A wide flat area directly in front of the buildings is covered in fine hardcore before the natural slope resumes.

The quarry was originally worked for limestone, with two original pillars quarried out. A quarry is shown on 1830 mapping, though not mentioned in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs and must have been small. The concrete structures were constructed during the Second World War when limestone was actively extracted by R Wark and Sons of Castlerock. B Mullan and Sons purchased the quarry in the late 1950s and continued operation until approximately ten years ago as a stone quarry for aggregates. The buildings and equipment were then dismantled, though occasional extraction still takes place, hampered by an archaeological site located on the hill crest above.

The site above the quarry contains the remains of an old burial ground and a stone circle, known locally as Keady ruins or the Temple. This comprises a large circle formed by a wall of stones varying from two to six feet in length. The wall is six feet broad and currently two feet high, with the circle measuring 65 feet in diameter. A smaller circle of 16 feet diameter sits within it. The Historic Monument Reference is LDY2:1.