Volume Nine - Pre-Victorian to the present day - even more aspects - Radyr Stone  . . .

The contractor for these works was Smith and Knight. By 1861, after a dispute between the company and the contractor, the company took over the construction works themselves. A letter to Smith and Knight from the Plymouth estate demanding payment of £74.6s.1d for royalties for stone from Radyr quarry extracted between 30 April and 31 July has survived, although there is no breakdown on how this figure was arrived at. Penarth Dock eventually opened in 1865. Shortly thereafter the docks and connecting railways were leased to the Taff Vale Railway.

Some recent views of the Radyr Stone masonry work at Penarth Dock.

Accounts for royalties paid to the Plymouth estate for stone extracted from Radyr quarry for two six-month periods between 30 October 1863 and 30 April 1864, signed by Samuel Dobson, Chief Engineer of PHDRC, have survived. In the first six-month period 33,423 cubic yards of masonry stone and 2,293 cubic yards of 'stone for other purposes' were extracted, whilst in the second six-month period amounts were 20,774 cubic yards of masonry stone and 7,145 cubic yards of stone for other purposes. Royalties per cubic yard were 3d for masonry stone and 1½d for other stone and the dead rent was £50 for six months, this amount being deducted from royalty payments.

The figures for cubic yards may be multiplied by a factor of two (a very conservative estimate) to convert to tons, from which it can be seen that at least 106,000 tons of masonry stone and perhaps a further 19,000 tons of other stone appear to have been extracted in only one year. However, the reference to cubic yards in the above account may have been an error and should be tons.

Later Quarry Proprietors - William Smith - In the 1861 census William Smith, a quarry foreman, born in 1829 in Ermington, near Ivybridge, Devon, resided at Radyr quarry with his wife Sarah and their children.