Warche Quarries

These are the Warche Quarries, near Bévercé (Malmedy), a large quarry operated by the Nelles Frères company, from which a characteristic schist sandstone, also locally called " Pierre de Nelles", is extracted. This stone has been used for façades, particularly for restorations and extensions around the Reinhardstein Castle and other projects in the Hautes Fagnes region.
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Geologically, it is a detrital sedimentary rock rich in silicates, exhibiting a characteristic schistose (cleavable) structure: fine clay layers alternate with wider layers of microquartzite bound by a clayey cement. Relatively compact, durable, low in porosity, and frost-resistant, this rock displays warm hues ranging from blue-gray to honey, passing through ochre and rust, making it particularly attractive for façades, wall cladding, and landscaping.
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The quarry has been operated as a family business since the 1960s. Nelles Frères combines extraction with the transformation of the stone into building stone, garden stone, slabs, and boulders (large stacked blocks). Thanks to its schistose structure, the stone naturally cleaves into fine slabs, significantly reducing sawing and ensuring energy-efficient production. It is therefore a local product, derived from a short supply chain, which possesses a well-defined regional identity.

The "schist sandstone" from the Nelles quarry, near Malmedy, lithostratigraphically belongs to the Ordovician strata of the Stavelot massif, more specifically to the assemblages of quartzite and schist from the Lower Paleozoic. These sediments were initially deposited on a relatively deep seabed, subsided by tectonic sinking, in the form of successive turbidity currents: density flows of sand and silt sliding from a shallow marginal area to a deeper basin. During the Variscan orogeny, these assemblages were folded, thrust, and metamorphosed to form the current association of schist and quartzite beds, which are now exploited as building stone.
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Pascal Brackman