Client:
Tarmac
Contractor:
Groundwork East
Project details:
Tarmac’s Stanway Quarry near Colchester is a 77 hectare site that supplies 500,000 tonnes of high-quality sand and gravel products each year for concrete, asphalt, drainage, paving bedding and sports / horticultural purposes. Operational since 1969, the quarry employs 26 people and is also the regional office for Tarmac's Southern Aggregates & Asphalt business. Beside the site offices was a small previously under-used thin woodland copse that has now been utilised as an outdoor rest and lunchtime eating area, as well as for enhancing local biodiversity with woodstacks for invertebrates and nesting boxes for birds. The selected seating for the scheme was Furnitubes’ Elements with gabion supports. This choice made perfect sense on two levels – the aggregate fill to the gabions is sourced from the quarry so local and low-cost, and their heavy weight means the benches did not require intrusive concrete foundations, instead simply secured by staking into the ground through the base of the gabion basket before being infilled with aggregate. Eleven 2.45m long benches were supplied in all, set out in linear arrangements between the trees, with selected benches joined with new lines of hedge planting. The site is now a delightful retreat for the staff from both their busy office environment and the heavy quarrying activities that take place close by.
Visit the Furnitubes International website for more information on Stanway Quarry, Colchester, Essex