Eccleston Quarry is a mile south of

Eccleston, Lancashire Eccleston is a village and civil parish of the Borough of Chorley in Lancashire, England. It is beside the River Yarrow, and was formerly an agricultural and later a weaving settlement. History Its name came from the Celtic word ''"eglēs"' ...

. It is also called Eccleston Delph and Eccy Delph (pronounced "ekky"). It is an old stone quarry that flooded. It is a popular

site Site most often refers to: * Archaeological site * Campsite, a place used for overnight stay in an outdoor area * Construction site * Location, a point or an area on the Earth's surface or elsewhere * Website, a set of related web pages, typical ...

for

scuba diving Scuba diving is a mode of underwater diving whereby divers use breathing equipment that is completely independent of a surface air supply. The name "scuba", an acronym for " Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus", was coined by Chr ...

. Visibility is generally very poor and ropes have been strung between each underwater 'feature' to aid navigation, since traditional compass methods are all but impossible in the murky waters. Much work has been undertaken to improve visibility in the recent past, and by 2010 the visibility was much improved.

History

Formerly a Mr. Hurst ran it as a stone

quarry A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to reduce their envir ...

and employed 12 men. From it came stone for Blackpool

Promenade An esplanade or promenade is a long, open, level area, usually next to a river or large body of water, where people may walk. The historical definition of ''esplanade'' was a large, open, level area outside fortress or city walls to provide cl ...

, and thin split stone used as slates for roofing in the area. It was formerly also called Hurst House Delph and Marsden's Quarry. A local resident said that "during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

a Ministry paid a local man to run at intervals a pump to keep the quarry empty while its owner and staff were away. After the war due to official reorganization they stopped paying the local man, who therefore stopped running the pump, and over time the quarry flooded." After it was abandoned and allowed to flood by

ground water Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidate ...

seeping in, it was an unofficial

site for a long time. The back of the quarry was cliff standing straight out of the water, and there were no buildings except a stone hut near the entrance, and a machinery shed which was submerged when the quarry flooded. Over the years the shed's sheet-metal walls and roof rusted away, leaving its metal skeleton. On 14 October 1979 the handless body of narcotics dealer Marty Johnstone ("Mr Asia") was discovered in the quarry by local divers. Johnstone had been murdered on the orders of his associate Terry Clark ("Mr Big"). The discovery led to an international police investigation and the breakup of the "Mr Asia" narcotics gan

Around the year 2000 it was pumped dry, and over 250 cars and much rubbish were removed from it, and it was landscaped, and re-flooded, and Dive center, scuba diving centre buildings built by it, and objects were submerged for divers to dive on.

Facilities

The Delph has a cafe, shop, changing facilities, swimming pool, training room, equipment hire and an air filling station.

Images

File:Aa eccleston bldgs 00.jpg, View of new buildings from edge of car park File:Aa eccleston view along lake.jpg, View along length of quarry from car park File:Aa eccleston cliff 00.jpg, View towards cliff File:Aa eccleston newcut 00.jpg, New rock exposure where a path was made, probably

New Red Sandstone The New Red Sandstone, chiefly in British geology, is composed of beds of red sandstone and associated rocks laid down throughout the Permian (300 million years ago) to the end of the Triassic (about 200 million years ago), that under ...

Shore facilities

There are many entry and exit points including shore entry with concrete slipways, sturdy steel deep entry points with fin friendly steps. Most have railings with chain linkages.

Underwater features

There are many things for divers to explore including speedboats, a

Jet Provost The BAC Jet Provost is a British jet trainer aircraft that was in use with the Royal Air Force (RAF) from 1955 to 1993. It was originally developed by Hunting Percival from the earlier piston engine-powered Percival Provost basic trainer, an ...

, armoured personnel carriers, a light tank, containers, a concrete tube, and a gnome garden, and a playground. As well as these there are training platforms at various depths from 3m to 9m. All are marked by surface buoys.

Underwater life

The Delph is well stocked with a large variety of fish including koi carp: bags of food can be bought to feed the fish.

Angling Angling is a fishing technique that uses a fish hook or "angle" (from Old English ''angol'') attached to a fishing line to tether individual fish in the mouth. The fishing line is usually manipulated via a fishing rod, although rodless techni ...

is not allowed there.

Filming

A '' Coronation Street'' episode where a car nearly fell into water but was stopped by bushes, was filmed there.

External links

Eccleston QuarrySturgeon at Eccleston Delph
– Set of interesting images on Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA prevents upload) {{coord, 53.6291, -2.7291, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Diving quarries in the United Kingdom Lakes of Lancashire Quarries in England