Listing
Search the List

What is Listing?

Listing Guidance

Apply for Listing

Missing Pieces Project

Blue Plaque Scheme
Listing

Find out about listed buildings and other protected sites, and search the National Heritage List for England (NHLE).

Find out about listing

Terracotta tiles on the roof of Saintoft Lodge, Newton-on-Rawcliffe, Ryedale, North Yorkshire. Grade II listed © Historic England Archive DP371715
Advice
Climate Change

Heritage at Risk

Your Home

Technical Guidance

Planning

Caring for Heritage

Constructive Conservation
Advice

See our extensive range of expert advice to help you care for and protect historic places.

Get our advice

A contractor cutting bricks for the wall of the partially-restored wild and natural walled garden at Warley Place, Brentwood. Explore our technical advice section © Historic England Archive DP313199
Research
Our Research Strategy and Agenda

Research Governance

Latest Research

Research Methods

Current Research

Research Results

Support & Collaboration

Inclusive Heritage

Heritage Counts
Research

Discover and use our high-quality applied research to support the protection and management of the historic environment.

Discover our research

Archaeologist Dr David Neal discussing his illustration of the mosaic being excavated at Rutland Roman Villa with members of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services team View image DP264265 © Historic England
Images & Books
Find Photos

Search All Publications

Buy Books

The Historic England Archive
Images & Books

Historic England holds an extensive range of publications and historic collections in its public archive covering the historic environment.

Browse our collections

Children play with a doll and a pram on the cobbled Church Path in Queen Camel, Somerset, in April 1953. At the far end of the path is the tower of the Church of St Barnabas, which dates to the 14th century. Photographer: John Gay Image reference: AA091596 © Historic England Archive
Services & Skills
Education

Grants

Our Planning Services

Training & Skills

Archive Services

Heritage Action Zones

Levelling Up Places Service
Services & Skills

Find out about services offered by Historic England for funding, planning, education and research, as well as training and skill development.

Learn about our services

Heritage Apprentices in a training session on the Researching The Historic Environment module and training in Architectural Photography. Find out more about Heritage Apprenticeships © Historic England Archive DP347660
What's New
News

In Your Area

Historic England Blog

Latest Research

Heritage Online Debate

Statements

Stay up to Date
What's New

Read about our current news, projects and campaigns nationally and in your area.

Catch up with what's new

Two horsemen reading The Sportsman, 30 Oct 1902, Farnborough, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. Part of the Alfred Newton and Sons collection. Source Historic England Archive. BB98/02592
About Us
What We Do

Who We Are

How We Are Funded

Contact Us

Careers

Volunteer with Historic England
About Us

Historic England is the public body that helps people care for, enjoy and celebrate England's spectacular historic environment.

Find out more

Mountbatten House (formerly Gateway House), Basing View, Basingstoke, the former headquarters for the paper merchants Wiggins Teape by Arup Associates. Listed at Grade II. © Historic England
Sign in
Manage my account

Sign out

Roman quarry including Edgar's Cave and the rock-cut figure of Minerva on Edgar's Field, 150m south west of Dee Bridge

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1014718
Date first listed:: 13-Dec-1929

User submitted image — Uploaded by Barrie Price This photo may not represent the current condition of the site
View all

Location

Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.

This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale.

What is the National Heritage List for England?

The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.

The list includes:

🏠 Buildings
🏰 Scheduled monuments
🌳 Parks and gardens
⚔️ Battlefields
⚓ Shipwrecks

Find out more about listing

Historic England Archive

Search over 1 million photographs and drawings from the 1850s to the present day using our images archive.

Find Photos

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1014718
Date first listed:: 13-Dec-1929
Date of most recent amendment:: 18-Sep-1996

Location

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

District:: Cheshire West and Chester (Unitary Authority)
Parish:: Non Civil Parish
National Grid Reference:: SJ 40674 65613

Reasons for Designation

The Roman conquest of Britain brought a signficant increase in the requirement for building stone and generated the first major quarrying industry to be developed in England. Quarries were opened and exploited from soon after the conquest to the end of the Roman period in the fifth century. The majority were used for a very limited period of time and met the requirements for building stone within their immediate areas. A few, including the Purbeck marble quarries, produced very high quality building stone which was transported for use over a wide area. Many were under military control to produce stone for forts or defence works such as Hadrian's Wall. Others were under the control of town authorities. In some instances they may also have been privately owned. Most provided building stone, but a few were used for more specific purposes to produce quern or mill stones. Quarrying techniques were relatively simple and involved the use of wedges, separation trenches and percussion to split lumps of rock from the parent material. Irregular blocks of stone were usually dressed to shape before being transported from the quarries. Tracks and pathways enabling the removal of stone from the quarry would also have existed. Visible remains include working faces, waste heaps and dressing floors. Today, however, very few Roman quarries can be positively identified because reuse in later times has removed much evidence for Roman activity, whilst the continued use of similar quarrying techniques over long periods often makes it impossible to determine the exact date of surviving remains. Most of the quarries which are considered to be Roman are dated on the basis of surviving inscriptions or carvings, usually on the worked face. Fewer than 50 quarries have been confirmed to retain evidence for Roman activity. In view of their rarity and the insights they provide into Roman technology and building works, all surviving examples will be identified to be nationally important.

The Roman quarry and shrine in Edgar's field is a unique survival in the British Isles. The quarry has been securely dated by an archaeological excavation to an early period of the Roman occupation coincident with the building in stone of the legionary fortress at Chester and the shrine is unusual in having survived the arrival of Christianity and later quarrying in the area.

Details

The monument includes a Roman quarry face on which is carved a figure of the Roman goddess Minerva. A cave is cut into the rock face behind the figure and forms a shrine for votive offerings. This is known as Edgar's Cave. The rock outcrop bearing the carving and cave are now surrounded by a park with a childrens' playground in the centre and the grass around the monument is cut as a lawn. An area of the floor of the quarry is also included. The relief sculpted figure, which is also Listed Grade II, stands 1.45m high and 0.73m wide. It has been enclosed by a sandstone frame which originally held a steel gate across the front of the sculpture to protect it from vandalism. To the right of the frame, the cave is cut into the rock face; to the left it is built up with freestone to support it from behind. The entrance to the cave is now closed with a steel grill. The top of the rock face has been capped with stone setts. The exposed rock face is part of a more extensive quarry which curves around the ground known as Edgar's Field forming a slope with two terraces on the southern and western sides. Excavations in the early 1920s revealed that the quarry was in use c.100 AD. Soil was imported to cover the quarry floor in the late-second century AD. Roman occupation remains dating from that time on were found on the site. Subsequently stone was quarried from the site again during the Middle Ages. The sculpted shrine and figure of the goddess would appear to have been carved during the working of the quarry. It may have been adopted as a Christian shrine in later centuries which would account for the remarkable preservation of the figure and its surround. The shrine has a signboard on wooden uprights to the left of the frame. The signboard and its uprights are excluded from the scheduling but the ground beneath them is included.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:: 27582
Legacy System:: RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Newstead, R, 'Journal Chester Archaeological Society' in Edgars Field Handbridge Site LXIII, (1926), 103-51
Newstead, R, 'Journal Chester Archaeological Society' in Edgars Field Handbridge Site LXIII, (1926), 103-151
Smith, R, 'Journal British Archaeological Association' in , , Vol. V, (), 215

Legal

This monument is scheduled under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 as amended as it appears to the Secretary of State to be of national importance. This entry is a copy, the original is held by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.