Under New Ownership

De Lank changed hands in 2011, but the story of the people who took it on begins earlier, and a long way from Cornwall. Black Mountain Quarries was founded by Adrian and Carina Phillips in Wales in 2005, almost by accident. A local church asked whether there was any good building stone nearby, an old record pointed to a seam of red Devonian sandstone beneath the family farm, and they opened a small quarry to supply it. The stone found a market well beyond the parish, and a family business grew from there. By 2011 that business had taken on several quarries, and the most significant of them was De Lank. For a family that had built its name on winning good stone honestly and finishing it by hand, taking on Britain's oldest granite quarry, the source of the Eddystone Lighthouse and a long roll of national landmarks, was both a responsibility and a natural fit. What followed was a sustained programme of investment and modernisation, carried out on the principles the Phillips family had started with: keep the skilled people, protect the traditional methods of hand dressing and finishing, and run the quarry for the long term. In 2014 planning permission was extended through to 2050, securing its future, and the quarry has since supplied granite to projects from the Diana Memorial to the US Embassy, and welcomed a royal visit in recognition of its work for the Duchy of Cornwall. De Lank has been worked for more than 260 years. This is simply its latest chapter, in the hands of a family that understands stone.