Stoney Cove

Stone has been cut at Stoney Stanton since the Roman period, and quarrying on an industrial scale began in the early nineteenth century, with a railway added around 1850 to move granite out of the pit. Spring water was a constant problem for the quarrymen, held back by pumps, and when quarrying stopped in 1958 the pumps stopped too and the workings flooded. Local divers and water-skiers were already using the new lake within five years, and through the 1960s and 1970s it became a training ground for commercial divers heading to the North Sea oil fields. Stoney Cove Marine Trials Ltd was formed in 1978 to run the site for both commercial trials and amateur scuba diving.

What divers come for now is arranged on three shelves: an entry-level terrace at about 7 m, a much larger intermediate area at about 22 m that makes up more than 60% of the quarry, and an expert sump at 36 m. Onto this the operators have lowered a slow accumulation of wrecks and structures: the tug Stanegarth and the Nautilus submarine replica both went in during 2000, the tug Defiant followed in 2009, the trawler MV Belinda in 2010, and a diving bell used on the Thames Barrier project was moved into position in 2017. A Viscount airliner cockpit and a Wessex helicopter, both placed decades earlier, sit alongside them.

Stoney Cove is the best-known example of a pattern repeated at quarries across Britain. Capernwray, a 22-acre limestone quarry near Over Kellet in Lancashire, opened as a dive centre in 1995 with depths to 24 m and its own sunken airliner and minesweeper. Vobster Quay in Somerset offers 6 to 36 m over a former limestone quarry, with a helicopter fuselage and an armoured personnel carrier among its features. The National Diving and Activity Centre at Tidenham, Gloucestershire, went further, flooding a quarry in 1996 to reach 80 m before it opened in 2003 - though it closed to divers in February 2022, a reminder that these sites depend on an operator choosing to keep the gate open.