Limestone Quarries and Kilns

Looking uphill to a cone-shaped, stone structure built on a slope of rough grass. At the front and bottom of the structure is a fireplace-like opening. The structure appears to have a flat, open top. It stands on the right side of a hawthorn tree, which is just a little taller.
A surviving small, community-use limekiln near Hagg Farm, Fremington. See link below to Vernacular 1 category PDF, record 33. Photo Stephen Eastmead.

Lime, produced by burning limestone, has been used extensively in Britain for a wide variety of commonplace uses since at least Roman times. In areas like the Yorkshire Dales, where limestone outcrops are plentiful, so has been the presence of limekilns, of varying sizes, serving users from small communities of farmers to latterly more-substantial commercial interests.

Burnt limestone, technically calcium oxide, or quicklime, can be crushed to form powder, which can then be hydrated into a kind of paste called slaked-lime. In either form, its primary uses throughout medieval and modern history were to make mortar and plaster for building, and to spread on farmland, principally either to reduce acidity in the soil or to break it down and oxygenate it.

The drive towards industrial-scale production of lime during the 20th century saw the inevitable abandonment of countryside kilns. The last in Swaledale was probably the one at Downholme Quarry, which closed in the 1940s. Surviving limekilns in the two dales almost certainly represent a very wide range of antiquity. Some are more-or-less intact, others in ruins, some reduced to nothing more than minor bumps on the landscape. Many can assume to have been completely obliterated.

SWAAG president Tim Laurie recorded all but two of the entries in the SWAAG database concerning limestone quarries and kilns, which can be viewed at the following links.

Vernacular 1 category PDF – records 33, 356.
PDF for number group 154-218 – records 162, 163.
Settlements 1 category PDF – record 401.
Mining 1 category PDF – record 462.
Geological 1 category PDF – record 579.
Mining 2 category PDF – records 615, 676, 677, 678.
PDF for number group 752-801 – records 769, 776, 787, 788.
PDF for number group 852-918 – record 852.
PDF for number group 919-970 – record 970.

Reading list
Books by Yorkshire Dales geographer and landscape archaeologist David Johnson provide comprehensive information on quarries and limekilns in the Yorkshire Dales. See:
– Limestone Industries of the Yorkshire Dales, 2nd edition (Stroud, 2010).
– Quarrying in the Yorkshire Pennines: An Illustrated History (Stroud, 2016).
– Lime Kilns: History and Heritage (Stroud, 2018).