New Somerset Earth Science Centre set to open

MORE children and young people will have the chance to find out about the importance of quarrying when the new Somerset Earth Science Centre opens at Moons Hill Quarry, near the village of Stoke St Michael, at the end of this month.

Built at a cost of around £600,000, the environmentally friendly, carbon neutral building, which replaces the previous East Mendip Study Centre at Hanson’s Whatley Quarry, will employ two teachers and offer a bigger and better classroom equipped with the latest teaching aids, together with facilities for people with disabilities and special needs.

The new centre will provide accommodation for up to 32 children and will be available for schools to use as a base for geological field trips or projects linked to quarrying. All teaching materials and activities at the centre will be linked to the National Curriculum.

University students and adult history and geology groups will also be able to use the centre as a study base, and the facility will be available for wider community use during school holidays and in the evenings.

Largely funded by the Somerset Minerals Forum, Somerset County Council’s Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund and the Mendip Quarry Producers – a trade association representing all the major quarrying companies in Somerset (Aggregate Industries, Hanson, Morris & Perry, Tarmac and Wainwright), the centre will be managed by a charitable company with all running costs underwritten by the Mendip Quarry Producers.

Describing the new building as a ‘wonderful facility’, project manager and centre director Peter Barkwill said it represented a very exciting time in the evolution of the centre from its original base at Whatley Quarry, as well as heralding the start of another chapter in the long history of Moons Hill.

Princess Anne has been invited to officially open the centre at a special ceremony scheduled to take place in July.