Newton Abbot Lime Kilns History

Hello all welcome to todays blog, I am Danny Hodgson a Master Chimney Sweep today we will be exploring some of Netwon Abbot, Devons history.

South Devon has industrial heritage. Quicklime was a commodity in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was used to make mortar, plaster and limewash, and was frequently used as a dressing for the land to reduce the acidity of the soil.

It was made in lime kilns by burning locally quarried limestone. Most were built between 1700 and 1850, they are stone structures and many worked until the 20th century. There are over 100 known lime kilns in South Devon; they’re particularly common around the Kingsbridge and Dart estuaries with 22 known on the Kingsbridge, Salcombe estuary alone.

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the mineral calcite (calcium carbonate: CaCO3). The Romans developed the burning of limestone to make lime for use in building as a mortar, although there is little evidence of their kilns in this country.

During the Middle Ages, with the increase in building, the demand for lime had grown. However; until the middle of the eighteenth century most lime kilns were temporary structures near to the site where the lime was required. These were typically left to ruin after use.

Burning limestone, gives you quick lime, calcium oxide. Mixed with water this produces slaked lime or calcium hydroxide. When slaked lime or quick lime was added to the land it raised its pH this improved its fertility. Slaked lime was also used as lime putty for building. This is soft when first mixed, but with time absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere and hardens as it reverts back to calcium limestone

Lime kilns were used from medieval times right through to the 18th and 19th centuries. They were used in earlier times for the production of mortar for building purposes, and sometimes, for the production of lime for agricultural purposes.

Lime for building is derived from chalk or limestone (carbonate of lime).

The process is very simple. It consists in heating the stone in kilns constructed in the open air, in the vicinity of places providing the fuel and the raw limestone, for there is no point in transporting the untreated bulk material.

The limekiln is about eighteen feet in height and is lined with bricks able to survive the fire. An opening at the bottom provides access. Either an arch of limestone is built over the fuel and then the kiln filled above this; or alternate layers of limestone and fuel are packed into the kiln. The fuel is then ignited, and the heat can be prolonged by shutting the top opening of the kiln chimney with grass. The heat decomposes the limestone into pure lime (quicklime) and carbonic gas.

7After the process is complete, the lime is broken up and removed from the kiln then it is shipped.

The common feature of early kilns was an egg-cup shaped burning chamber, with an air inlet at the base, this is made of brick. Limestone was crushed to fairly uniform 1 to 2.5 inch lumps – fine stones were rejected. Dome shaped layers of coal and limestone were built up in the kiln on grate bars across the burning chamber. When loading was complete, the kiln was kindled at the bottom, and the fire gradually spread upwards through the charge. When burnt through, the lime was cooled and raked out through its base. Fine coal ash dropped out and was rejected with the “riddlings”.

Only lump stone could be used, because the charge needed to breathe during firing. This oit a limit on the size of kilns and explains why kilns were all much the same size. Above a certain diameter, the half burned charge would be likely to collapse under its own weight, extinguishing the fire. So, kilns always made 25-30 tonnes of lime in a batch.

Typically the kiln took a full day to load, three days to fire, two days to cool and a day to unload, so a one week turnaround was typical of this process. The degree of burning was controlled by trial and error from batch to batch by varying the amount of fuel used. Because there were large temperature differences between the centre of the charge and the material close to the wall, a mixture of under-burned, well-burned and dead-burned lime was normally produced. Typical fuel efficiency was low, with 0.5 tonnes or more of coal being used per tonne of finished lime (15 MJ/kg).

Lime kiln in newton abbot

The development of the national rail network increasingly made the local small-scale kilns unprofitable, and they gradually died out through the 19th century, replaced by larger industrial plants. At the same time, new uses for lime in the chemical, steel and sugar industries led to larger scale plants. These also saw the development of more efficient kilns.

Thank you for reading.

Danny Hodgson Master Chimney Sweep Devon.