Period House Magazine June 2009 Stone article.
The first stone buildings in Britain were crude pre-historic stone slab shelters. Then, much later, came the Romans with their refined building skills and they constructed some fine towns and villas. Move on several centuries and there was a resurgence in stone building works from Norman times to the 15th century which saw the construction of cathedrals, monasteries, churches and castles.
In the 17th century, stone manor houses were built for the rising yeoman and professional class as well as the aristocracy. After the great fire, portland stone, a white limestone, was used to rebuild London, and many other towns and cities then built with stone to avoid fires. The stone quarrying industry expanded considerably as a result of the industrial revolution and the massive expansion or industrial and urban centres in the late Victorian era.
Today many builders use thinly slabbed stone to clad concrete and steel structures instead of load-bearing block stone, but specialist builders still use traditional stone building methods.
Limestones were used in Yorkshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Devon, as well as Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire and Oxfordshire, where they are still quarried. Lincolnshire limestones range from pale whitish brown to yellowish brown. Yellow Bath stone, produced in mines underneath the city, is used for the beautiful buildings of Bath and the surrounding villages. Its relative softness is ideal for elaborate decorative carving.
Larger stone houses tend to be in dressed stone; ashlar, which has a uniform face and was used in 18th and 19th century classical architecture by those who could afford it. Smaller buildings in the limestone belt would traditionally be in rubble stone, perhaps with dressed stone window surrounds and quoins (corner blocks.) Stone in Oxfordshire ranges from rich Chocolate brown ironstone in villages like Deddington in the north, and more honey-coloured stone further south.