The village of Horton-in-Ribblesdale lies in the wilds of North Yorkshire, some six miles north of the market town of Settle, and up to the mid-nineteenth century it was just an agricultural hamlet in the middle of nowhere. But things were about to change, driven by the commercial rivalries of the burgeoning new railway age, and Horton would soon find itself on the map. One of the most ambitious of the railway companies was the Midland Railway, whose network extended from its London terminus of St Pancras via its Derby headquarters to the northern cities of Manchester and Sheffield. Their ultimate aim was to take on their great rivals the London & North Western Railway by providing a direct service to Scotland, and under the leadership of their dynamic general manager James Allport the Midland drove their system northwards by building the famous Settle to Carlisle line. Crossing 73 miles of bleak and hostile uplands between Settle Junction and the border city of Carlisle, the line was completed in the mid-1870s at enormous cost in money and lives. And the first stop north of Settle was Horton-in-Ribblesdale, connecting the little Yorkshire village with the outside world.
Horton lies on a geological formation known as the Great Scar Limestone Group, and for centuries the limestone had been quarried on a small-scale basis for local use. The arrival of the railway opened up markets for quarrying on an industrial scale, and enterprising Victorian businessmen were quick to seize the opportunities to make their fortune in the limestone hills. Foremost amongst them was John Delaney, an Irish immigrant whose family had moved to Cheshire to escape the hunger and poverty wreaked on their homeland by the potato famine. John had studied geology at Manchester University, so he was well able to appreciate the potential of the endless limestone deposits next to the brand-new railway line. He bought up land west of Horton, including the small Beecroft Quarry, and opened the vast new Horton Quarry in 1889. Some of the stone was carried out by rail, but much went into limekilns on the site to be burned into lime, which was then loaded into covered rail wagons bearing the Delaney name. These wagons would have travelled far and wide throughout the rail network, taking Horton lime to customers the length and breadth of the country, and making John Delaney a very wealthy man. But in an age of ruthless exploitation, this devout Quaker was a man of principle, and his workers were fairly treated and well paid. He ran the company until his death in 1921 at the age of 75, and even to the last he thought of the quarrymen whose labours had made his fortune. Each of his workers was left five pounds in John Delaney's will, a generous sum at the time.
Control of the business passed to John's daughter Carrie, an astute businesswoman in her own right. In due course the company was rebranded as Settle Limes, and traded until it was absorbed by industrial giant ICI in the early 1960s. The rail link was removed in 1965, and lime-burning ceased in the 1980s. But the quarry is still in use, now owned by the Hanson conglomerate, and in this more environmentally conscious age there are plans to reinstate the rail connection and transport the stone out by private-owner wagons once more.The giant bogie hopper wagons of today would dwarf the peak-roofed wooden lime wagons which bore John Delaney's name back in the age of steam, but you can bring back the old days on your layout with our Delaney lime wagon.