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The initiative, which will capture and celebrate the quarrying heritage of the East Mendips, is supported by Mendip Quarry Producers members, Aggregates Industries, Hanson, Tarmac, Morris and Perry and Wainwrights.

Peter Barkwill, director of the centre at Moons Hill Quarry, said: "Quarrying is a rapidly changing but little studied industry. If this project isn't carried out many memories and archive materials will be lost.

"The generous support from the Heritage Lottery Fund will enable us to piece together this important part of local history through a variety of ways. An invaluable way of collecting and capturing these memories will be through oral history recording."

The team will work with schools and community groups. Working on such a diverse range of projects will give participants a deeper insight into this previously under-researched part of local history, as well as teaching them communication, IT, recording, archiving and transcript writing skills.

Their contribution to the project will ensure the creation of a major oral history and digital image archive which will be made available on a specially designated website called Quarry Faces.

The website will be developed with the help of schools and will make available all the gathered material as well as giving information about events and talks being offered to community groups. A mobile exhibition will be designed and will tour local venues and events.

To ensure Quarry Faces reaches a wide audience, an illustrated book will be published.

The three-year initiative will be based at the Somerset Earth Science Centre at Stoke St Michael.

Angela Yeoman, a trustee of the centre, is thrilled with the new project.

She said: "Support from the Heritage Lottery Fund is enabling us to forge stronger links with schools and community groups, bringing our recently opened centre much closer to the community.  Resulting project resources will meet an increasing need from local schools for follow-up information on their environment studies and is great way of engaging older members with the centre."

Nerys Watts, head of the South West region of the fund, said: "This is an ambitious project that will really open up the heritage to new audiences, telling the important story of quarrying in the area.  It will show how this heritage affected the people who lived and worked in the quarries, how this shaped the local communities and the impact that those people had on the environment, economy and society."

To get involved in the project, or share memories of the quarrying industry, call the Quarry Faces project team, Robin Thornes and Ruth Worsley, on 01749 840156, or email quarryfaces@somersetearthsciencecentre.org.uk