The Great Quarry and Black Rock Quarry operated for many years, stone from the latter being used, amongst other things, for pitching and paving in the city. The use of explosives in this process dramatically altered the landscape of the gorge. George William Manby, artist, friend of Nelson, and the inventor of the rocket life-saving apparatus, had settled in Clifton 1801, and in his Beauties of Clifton (1802), writes: ‘The venerable majesty of this truly sublime wonder of nature is receiving daily insult and robbed of some ancient grace by the rude hand of mercenary labour.’
Also addressing the subject is Southey’s Letters from England, by Don Manuel Espriella, published in 1807, a lively and graphic description of the country, and the customs, manners, politics, and religious sects of the people at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In this, the narrator regrets the destruction of the Clifton rocks, and pithily satirises the Bristolians:—
‘The people of Bristol seem to sell everything that can be sold. They sold their cross—by what species of weight or measurement I know not—they sold their eagle by the pound, and here they are selling the sublime and beautiful by the boat- load.’
‘Bristol diamonds’– a local quartz – was also mined in the Gorge and sold extensively by souvenir stalls along the resort. These stones are the same as those used in the Clifton Grotto of the Bristol merchant, Thomas Goldney.
In 1840 complaints were made in the newspaper that 'frightful inroads have been made upon those bold projecting rocks that once overhung the river' and of the incessant noise of the workmen's implements. Five years later there were reports of workmen employed in blasting the rocks in 6 or 8 different places. From then on there were increasing complaints about the blasting happening at any time, with stones being thrown into the air at great force, endangering the general public and those travelling on the river.
