Lime Making

By David V Clarke

When I was a small boy it was wisely and rightly drummed into me by my parents “Never to forget my P’s and Q’s”, because “please”, derived from “If it pleases you”, showed respect and “Thank you” expresses timely regard and gratitude for any service or kindness shown. I remember when I was about 5 going off to the shop, or a school friend’s party and being told as I left home “And David, don’t forget your P’s and Q’s”! Personally, I have always cherished the rightness of that parental instruction as a matter of great consideration, because in life the spirit and underlying attitude it expresses, is part of the cement of social life. It is the grist to considerate relationships and other ties of goodwill, all of which sweetens life, whereas the fruit of no respect or regard can lead to dismay and sometimes bitterness. I am often intrigued how human nature is reflected in nature itself. This recently came home to me when trying to uncover a little more of the story relating to Fownhope’s Lime making past. I read of someone, rightly, making the claim in 1808 that “Lime is an article of great consideration”. What was being esteemed here were the many economic, practical, valuable and improving qualities lime could bring about. Its part in cement, plaster and a wash to lighten buildings within and waterproof them without. Its role in water purification and effluent treatment, the bleaching of paper, the preparation of hides in leather making and its improving role in the structure and sweetening of soil for agricultural and horticultural production, all made it “an article of great consideration”.

In 1656 a book, entitled “The Herefordshire Orchard”, publicised not only the importance in improving the land with farmyard manure but also the spreading of lime. In this book its author a man named Beal, revealed that before lime spreading began there were parts of Herefordshire known as Ryelands (the same name as a famous breed of sheep because no other corn crop apart from Rye thrived in these places. This, however, ended when, with the application of lime other cereal crops did well. In his “General View of the Agriculture in the County of Hereford”, published in 1794, John Clark tells not only of the benefits to grassland, where gorse, broom and sedges abounded, by drainage, ploughing and reseeding but also the dramatic improvement, both in grass and many other crops, through the occasional but regular application of lime. John Clark further tells us it was the practice in his time in Herefordshire to spread lime at the rate of one to one and a half wagons an acre.

The particular factors encouraging the demand for lime in the late l8th and early l9th centuries were the Inclosure Acts, making land use more efficient in productive and commercial ends by making farmsteads out of adjacent fields, improving the scrubland and increasing field size as high prices for corn encouraged cereal growing. We know there was also a need for lime for both building purposes and in the village tanning trade, while the barge business allowed lime to be conveyed to wharfs up and down the Wye. Because the hills behind the village were rich and deposits of limestone able to address this need, the Limemaking epoch in the Parish and locality developed. This involved gangs of men with picks and shovels quarrying the stone leaving the holes which stretch along the hill area from below Nupend to Common Hill, with wagon loads of stone conveyed to lime- making kilns adjacent or near to where it was quarried. Today, these hills are wooded but in those days much wood on quarry sites would be removed to get at the stone and provide fuel for the kilns. We know some of the workforce was living in small stone-built tenements well over 150 years ago, one example of which can still be seen at the top of Hawkers Lane. From the industrial, archaeological and social history point of view, sites of some 15 Lime Kilns have been traced in the Woolhope/Fownhope area. Ten of these in Fownhope Parish spread from Hope Springs, Shears Hill, Common Hill and Church Wood. The understanding seems to be that before the latter part of the 18th century, lime burning was evolving from lime made on pyres, to lime made in temporary kilns (which soon collapsed) to lime made in kilns with inverted cone shaped bowls, although these last were often troubled by blockages and uneven burns. From the latter part of the l8th century and up and into the 1840’s, when the benefits of lime were understood locally, kilns could be built to last, with improved inverted bottle-shaped bowls, provided there were those prepared and skilled enough to manage them in a methodical and business like manner.

For several decades, our local lime making business flourished, with fresh sites being bought or rented to quarry the stone and to erect kilns for that purpose when old sites were worked out. Uncovered references to Fownhope in the early l9th century refer to horse drawn wagons and pack horses as the means of transporting stone or lime. In the making of lime by these means, stone was carried up a ramp and deposited on the top of the kiln where it was mixed with layers of culm (coal) or wood in the open kiln bowl. Beneath this in the eye of the kiln, a fire was kindled with brushwood to ignite the fuel above, encouraged by the draught drawn through draw holes in the lower tunnel entrances to the kiln. Once the kiln was lit it could be kept burning without fuel, apart from fresh loads of stone, through its own heat. The state of the burning process was watched through eyeholes and, when lime was created by burning it was raked out at intervals through draw-holes. The best local remains of double draw kilns can be seen by Church Wood, Pagets Wood and at Lower Buckenhill.

It is clear that those who were in charge of kilns were not only skilled but, because they needed to keep records and accounts, were able to read and count. The heaviness of team quarry work, digging out an expected quota of stone a day and the heat of kiln work, required periods of relaxation and plenty to drink. The abundance of cider-houses close to the work and the practice of paying ten shillings for a wagon of lime, with three or four gallons of drink for the men, was typical.