1888 OS Map Blue text - Existing Marker Stones, Red text - Location of stone on Old OS Maps
On a walk around the woods many years ago I came across several stones erected in the woods. Two standing upright, both dated 1861, on the southern edge of the wood, and one that had fallen and was partially buried, dated 1851, on the western edge of the wood.
I was told that these stones could be the graves of Quakers. This could not be true since there are Quaker cemeteries in Bristol and the ones there are not of the same style as these gravestones.
Another person told me that these stones could be the graves of the Gamekeeper’s dogs - but if two of the Gamekeeper's dogs died in the same year surely they would have been buried in the same spot.
Finally I was also told that the stones were placed there to mark the year of plantation phases of the trees in the wood. This could be true since the woodland, in those days was used a shooting wood for the Earl of Warwick and also to provide timber for Greyfield Pit. So rather than produce drawings that could have been lost during the intervening years between planting and felling marker stones were erected.
Photographs - Alan Gray
While at Radstock Museum I met Mr Ray Ashman who was a mine surveyor from the 1940’s to the 1970’s. He stated that he had never seen marker stones like these and when he conducted a surface survey he used wooden pegs. However Ray did this work nearly 100 years after the stones were installed.
While at the Museum I found that they had a marker stone this time with the number 1854 written on it. They were presented with the stone but were not told where it came from.
Dialer Stone in Radstock Museum
Dialer Stone moved from Greyfield Wood many years ago and deposited in a garden in Maynard Terrace. Now safely in Radstock Museum
Text on the Notice above the Dialer Stone in Radstock Museum -
A nineteenth century mining surveyor was known locally as a “Dialler” after the instrument he used, known as a “Miner’s Dial”. The dial was a finely graduated compass fitted with sights and incorporated a clinometer to measure the dip, or angle of strata and slopes.
Besides underground surveys, a Dialler would often carry out a corresponding surface survey to show the extent of underground workings. Key points on the surface were marked with pegs or stones, the latter inscribed with the date of the survey.
Locally, such stones appear to be confined to Greyfield Wood, Clutton, marking the extent of the Earl of Warwick’s Greyfield Colliery.
The stone on display here is dated 1854.
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I was still not sure of the purpose of the stones and was not convinced that they had anything to do with the coal mining industry. Then a friend let me have a photograph of an identical stone that he found in the Forest of Dean and told me that it was a marker stone used to mark the underground extent of the coal mines.
HIGH LITTLETON & HALLATROW - A PICTORIAL HISTORY by Michael Browning and Keith Trivett
Page 106
"A dialer’s stone in Greyfield Woods. Mining surveyors were called dialers simply because they used instruments with dials. After carrying out an underground survey, a similar operation would be carried out on the surface and markers like headstones, some dated, were placed on the surface directly above strategic points underground. There used to be several such stones, relating to Greyfield Colliery, in the woods but some have disappeared in recent years."
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I think in all probability that these marker stones were placed a various locations within the wood to mark the extent of the underground coal mines so he would not be paying royalties to adjacent landowners.