Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

Photo: Cassell & Co., Ltd. RUBISLAW GRANITE QUARRY, ABERDEEN. THE ABERDEEN GRANITE INDUSTRY. LT HOUGH Aberdeen is universally L known as the Granite City, compara- tively little is heard of how the glis- tening masses of stone are torn from their beds in the bowels of the earth, and cut and hewn into magnificent monuments and e ’ ' I, I A _ graceful colonnades or cornices for the em- bellishment of our public buildings. One can readily understand how a tolerably soft material like sandstone is wrought into delicate tracery for the beautifying of a cathedral window, but it seems difficult to realise that a material so hard as granite can be cut into sections like a Dutch cheese, and carved into a Corinthian column, a delicately draped figure, or a garland of flowers. Nevertheless, this is done. It is true the labour involved in carving a block of granite is much greater than that required for working freestone, but the result is a hundred times more lasting. Ruskin, wield- ing a master pen, wrote of the many-tinted “ stones of Venice,” glowing beneath an azure sky, but deplored the many signs of decay which marred their beauty. The stones of Aberdeen have not the transitory brilliance of hue admired by Ruskin, but, on the other hand, they are as imperishable as those of ancient Egypt, and will doubtless remain un- touched by time when the glories of the “ Queen of the Adriatic ” have crumbled into dust. The granite spires and towers of Aberdeen, gleaming in the summer sunshine, have earned for it the title of the “ Silver City by the Sea.” Within recent years an enormous development has taken place in the Aberdeen granite industry, owing principally to the introduction of improved means for quarrying and working the material. Machinery for cutting granite has undergone a complete revolution, and no architectural or monumental detail is considered too elaborate for re- production in this material. To those unconnected with the industry there are, broadly speaking, only two distinct varieties of granite, grey and red, but in reality, of each of these there is a multitude of tints and sizes of grain, according to the quarry, or particular part of a quarry, from which the stone is obtained. The greys vary from a deep blue to a silvery tint, and the reds from a rich carmine to a salmon pink. Of the original formation of granite the most generally accepted theory is that the rock, with its constituents of felspar, quartz, and mica was heaved up through the earth from a great depth, molten and impregnated with vapour, and the cooling process being slow