SITE UPDATE 01.07.2001

Dear friend

Stancliffe Stone has been taken over by Marshalls PLC, a nationwide supplier of building materials (annual turnover £300M) who say they are keen to expand into natural stone. As yet we still don't have any snail-mail contact for this company, just the overly-gimmicky, slow-loading, Microsoft-dependent web site. We are working on this.

Now, presumably Marshalls must already know about the problems with the quarry permission - any first year law undergraduate could see that that constitutes a "material fact". When we manage to get in touch with Marshalls, we will be keen to know what they intend to do. A bigger company may have more clout, but they can also decide to cut their losses with Lees Cross and Endcliffe -- and Stancliffe won't lose any face if the decision was forced upon them. Given what usually happens when a business about to embark on an expensive project gets bought out (i.e. the project in question gets quietly scrapped), we can even afford a touch of cautious optimism. And a bigger company also has more to lose if things go belly-up ..... one look at that web site says they care a lot about image .....

See you soon,

The Nine Ladies Web Site Team