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Many of Oxford’s leading buildings were originally built or faced with the local Headington stone, which already, by the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was in need of restoration work. Jackson used Clipsham in 1873 to repair some of the pinnacles of the Bodleian (Old Schools) quadrangle. Between 1902 and 1906 Hawksmoor’s twin towers at All Souls were rebuilt as was the top story of The Tom Tower and the west front of Christ Church in 1909 to 1912. In each case Clipsham Stone was used.
At about the same time that Sir Thomas Jackson introduced it into Oxford, Gilbert Scott, the architect, selected Clipsham for the battlements cresting and turrets of the Octagon of Ely Cathedral.
The Clipsham Quarries and the mineral rights entered the ownership of the Handley family in 1865 when John Handley purchased the Estate and its quarries at auction. John Handley, a banker and MP for Newark, left Clipsham Hall to his nephew William Davenport from Cheshire. A requirement of the inheritance was that William Davenport took the additional surname ‘Handley’. Clipsham Quarry Company remains in the same family today.
Famous statesmen remain in the public mind, and the late Lord Oxford and Asquith, who held the Premiership of Great Britain for over eight years, is one of these. His tomb in Sutton Courtenay Churchyard is also built of Clipsham stone, thus perpetuating his memory in this notable product of Rutland.
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During the Abyssinian troubles, in 1933, when sanctions prevented the import of Italian marble, the Company opened and worked a small quarry known as Suties, which yielded a vein of very hard stone capable of taking a good polish. This was very satisfactory for internal use but would not weather at all well. In the hope of avoiding confusion it was put on the market as “Clipsham marble”. However, it evidently became mixed up with ordinary Clipsham stone in masons’ yards and was accidentally used externally. Rather than endanger the good name of Clipsham stone, this pit was abandoned in 1939
During the period 1914 to 1943 Government and the Universities became important customers for Clipsham stone. When the quarries became most active, as many as 80 men were employed, travelling in to work from surrounding villages.
Between 1920 and 1926 Clipsham was used for the restoration of St George’s Chapel Windsor.
In 1926, Clipsham was used in Lincoln Cathedral for a life sized statue of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Saviour. The work was commissioned by Mrs Hood of Nettleham Hall, in memory of her two sons. The statue was carved by Bridgeman
and Son of Litchfield to the design of Mr Hare of London. The statue stands at the south porch of the Angel Choir of the Cathedral.
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