Castle Acre

Castle Acre Quarry produces ground chalk serving the West half of Norfolk. Around 15,000 tonnes a year is produced.

Castle Acre has two working faces currently with a bottom face seen here on the left and the top face which is on the right. Castle Acre chalk is very hard and takes longer to lift do to having to disc it quite a few times to be able to get it to manageable state. Due to its hardness it also has much flint in it which enable us to process the flint for other uses.

Needham Chalks are the UK’s largest producer of whole and knapped flints for decorative building work with over 1500 Tonnes of both black and white flint as well as Sand and Gravel Flints being processed each year at Castle Acre.

The flints are sourced from our Castle Acre and Caistor sites where they occur in the layers of the chalk stratum. The splitting (knapping) of the flint is a skilled process and the company has supplied flints to a number of prestigious projects including;

Windsor Castle
Southwark Cathedral
Canterbury University Library
The Old Priory at Castle Acre as well as many other English Nature Projects.

We also supply whole flints around the world and have shipped flint to Australia and the USA for different building projects.

Also unique to Needham Chalks are paramoudras, very large cylindrical flints, which are popular for ornamental use and are all processed at the Castle Acre Quarry.

For more information on the Flint Operation then information can be found on the Flint Knapping Page.

Castle Acre Quarry

Newton by Castle Acre

Swaffham

Norfolk

PE32 2BY