Monumental Architecture - Industrial Style!

[endlessrarities]

It's my last post from Pately Bridge now, and it's another entry devoted to industrial archaeology.

This time, I'm going to introduce you to a rather imposing lime-kiln at Toft Gate.  Lime kilns are often massive structures - the early clamp kilns are very simple structures, but the later examples can be quite elaborate and almost monumental in their form.  In this part of Yorkshire, the industrial buildings also have a peculiar trait where, instead of possessing a tall vertical chimney, they have a long flue running up a hillside to a short stumpy chimney which lies some distance away.  The Merryfield lead mines had such a flue/chimney combo, but it wasn't anything as well preserved as the example at Toft Gate.

Lime was widely used in the construction industry, but it also played a valuable role in agriculture.  Liming acid soils reduced acidity levels: this practice - combined with massive field drainage programmes - allowed formerly marginal land to be brought into arable cultivation.  These agricultural improvements were all the rage in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the agricultural landscape throughout Scotland and upland areas of England (and presumably Wales, too) was transformed by zealous landowners eager to get a better income from their estates.

This is the main kiln structure at Toft Gate:-

.
 

It's very elegantly wrought, of impeccable drystone construction.  The interior is equally well-built:-
 

 

The chimney sits further up the hill.  Though squat and rather solid, it is still rather fetching:-

But it's the flue that really makes an impact.  I've seen similar construction elsewhere, in Neolithic chambered tombs, or the subterranean storage chambers known as 'souterrains' which are prevalent in parts of Scotland:-

 

But you won't find a chambered tomb or a souterrain on the scale of this nineteenth century industrial structure.  It's rough and ready, it's not going to win any beauty contests with regards to its architecture, but it obviously did its job adequately enough and it made good use of the raw materials that were widely available at the time.  It also demonstrates the skills of the local craftsmen who would normally have been kept busy building drystane dykes and other agricultural structures. 

A fine job they did with this structure.  It's still surviving in a robust condition (though I daresay it's been consolidated in recent years - thanks, Heritage Lottery Fund, you've done it again!), and it makes an arresting landmark in the wider industrial landscape that survives in and around Pately Bridge.

I guess it's back to Ayrshire now.  I never did finish my series of Doors Open Day posts...  And tomorrow evening I'll be out at a party after work, so unfortunately you won't be hearing from me....

Comments

[roaming.livejournal.com]

Great photos. And as always, great tour/tour guide. Thank you!

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

That flue is extraordinary! Did you catch The Edwardian farm on BBC2 earlier this week? They actually used a restored limekiln to produce quicklime, but their kiln was just a stone-lined pit, no fancy flue, with the fumes rising straight up. I'd always suspected that producing quicklime was a nasty job, but the words that spring to mind now are 'hellish' and 'backbreaking'.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

I'd guess that was one of the more primitive clamp kilns. Did it involve layering the pit with limestone and coal then burning everything over a couple of days?

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's the one. I was quite surprised that they would have been using something so primitive still in Edwardian times, but I suppose intensive labour was cheaper than building something fancier in those days...

[red-trillium.livejournal.com]

These are interesting. I love the inside shot!