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

Collapse of the Gantry - 1863 - On September 1863 there was a very serious accident at the quarry caused by the failure of one of the timber members of a gantry road which carried three steam-powered mobile cranes, one of which was being used to lift a block of stone said to have weighed about 2 tons 13 cwt (2.7 tonnes). The failure resulted in the gantry collapsing onto a group of men beneath it causing the instant death of three and serious injury to several others. The crane and driver were precipitated onto the quarry floor some 30ft (9m) below; the driver miraculously escaped death but was seriously scalded by steam from the engine of the crane.

A description of the quarry, together with an account of the accident and the subsequent inquest was published in the Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian. According to this source the quarry was then about 120 yards (110m) long and for more than two-thirds this distance about 90 feet (27m) wide and the base of the quarry was up to about 10 to 15ft (3 to 4.6m) below the level of the railway. More than 150 men were employed at the quarry which delivered 400 to 500 tons of stone per week to Penarth.

The three men who were killed were Michael Foley, Traherne David (or David Trehorn - accounts vary), and Bartholomew (or Patrick) Herne. James Sivell received severe head injuries, Frederick Bond suffered a fractured leg and James Owen fractured an arm and injured a shoulder joint, and were hospitalised. George Day, James Parker and William Contlow were taken to their lodgings with less serious injuries.

A sketch illustrating the gantry road is presented - for simplicity only one of the three cranes is shown.

At the inquest, which was held at the Albion Hotel, Canton, evidence was heard from the quarry foreman William Smith, the engineer in overall charge of the works of the Penarth Dock and Railway Company, Samuel Dobson, the engineer of the Taff Vale Railway. George Fisher, and a quarryman. Charles Sallack, who had witnessed the accident.