Devil's Chimney (Gloucestershire)

The outcrop was well-known as a local landmark by the time that Cheltenham was established as a popular tourist destination, although its true origin appears to have been forgotten already.

Supposedly the Devil, provoked by the many Christian churches of the area, would sit atop Leckhampton Hill and hurl stones at Sunday churchgoers.

There is also a variation in colour from a pale cream in the upper ragstones down to a russet brown at the base, owing to a higher iron content.

[6] Heading uphill from the usual car park on Daisy Bank Road the lower slopes are planted with trees to stabilise them, where blocks of limestone slide downwards over the clays and then sands of the Lias acting as a weak lubricated layer.

[7] Behind the lime kilns, a 32 ft (9.8 m) bed of the pisolitic Pea Grit forms a steeper but crumbly cliff.

[7] Above the Pea Grits are two layers of freestone, separated by a band of oolitic marl,[8] forming a series around 100 ft (30 m) thick, or deeper elsewhere in the area.

[9] The freestones show clear current bedding, although some examples are so pronounced that it could form a weak spot and make the stone less useful for stonemasonry.

Its flat top represents the upper surface of the lower freestone, and the transition to the marls that would not support any such narrow column.

They were used locally for dry stone walling and for building in rubble masonry or Neo Gothic styles, such as at St Pauls College.

Movement of these rocks over the Pea Grit beneath has opened up much of their vertical jointing into fissures, some of which even show travertine deposits, although not in a commercially significant quantity.

The first industrial-era quarry began shortly after 1797 when the Cheltenham surgeon Charles Brandon Trye inherited the estate of Leckhampton Court.

[14][16] Although the utility of these new tramroads and inclines for the supply of building stone was welcomed in the Cheltenham Chronicle on their completion in April 1810, Trye did not live to see their benefits, as he died in 1811.

[17] Once the Tramroad was in operation, stone for Cheltenham was taken by that route and the original incline to the Birdlip Road was less important, and closed by about 1830.