The Anopha Quarry, also known as the Ffarqhar Quarry, is a quarry at the end of Thomas' Branch Line, and owned by the Ffarqhar Quarry Company.
History[]
The land on which the quarry now stands had been owned by the Croarie family since 1718. Prior to then, it was part of the holdings of the Earls of Sodor. After the Earldom was extinguished by Attainder in 1715, the Earl's estate reverted to the Crown, held in trust by the Governor of Sodor. In order to raise funds, the Governor decided to sell off land which was deemed unnecessary. Much of the land around Ffarqhar was sold to Tobias Croarie, already a prominent landowner in the area.
While some of the land would be developed, the land on the Anopha Fell would remain mostly untouched until 1833 when good stone was found underneath the land. Attempts by Jeremyn Croarie to start a large scale quarrying operation quickly fell apart, due to a lack of demand and an inability to provide adequate transportation. In 1874, the land was part of a dispute between the restored Earl of Sodor, Sir John Arnold Norramby, and the current landholder Nicholas Croarie. The dispute was settled when Nicholas promised to provide stone from his land should the Earl or his decendants ever require some.
It was Nicholas Croarie's son, Jabez who, feeling the pinch after the First World War, floated the Ffarqhar Quarry Company in 1924 to mine the stone under the land. Jabez needed two things - an attractive structure to show potential customers the quality of his stone and an adequate means of transporting his stone and workers. By now, the railways had taken a firm hold on the Island, but the nearest rail connection to Ffarqhar was at Elsbridge, and the railway had neither plans nor money to extend to Ffarqhar.