Toft Gate Lime Kiln

Planning for our camera club's summer outings programme, my recent visit to The Coldstones Cut (HERE) sparked ideas, so I went back to properly research the area. Adjacent to the artwork and the modern quarry is a small limestone quarry and kiln, Toft Gate, that was operative in the late 19th century. It is now ruined but you can still see broadly what it would have been like and there's an informative display board.  

Large blocks of limestone would have been cut from the quarry by the hewers. The stone-breakers, often children, would have broken these up into smaller pieces to be fed into the top of the furnace. Around the base, skilled lime burners would have packed coal into the eight fireboxes. The furnace was capped and the fire was lit. It heated the stone to above 800°C, driving out carbon dioxide, ventilated through a long flue, to produce quicklime, which collected within the vaulted chamber under the furnace. This was then raked out into a pit and mixed with water to make 'slaked lime' ready to be transported by cart to the cities. It was used in mortar and limewash for building, and for agricultural purposes too.  

The above photo is looking from one of the fire pit cavities into the furnace and down to where the quicklime settled. The photo below shows the inside of the flue that travels uphill to a squat chimney (see final photo) that would have released the gases from the furnace. 

It must have been a hard life working in these places but similar kilns existed all over the limestone area of Yorkshire. Demand for lime products was huge, as the Industrial Revolution sparked the building of mills, factories and housing for the workers. My own house was built in 1901 with lime mortar. Over the years it basically hardens back into limestone and, if you ever need to drill into the walls, it's a grey, gritty, crumbly substance.