Return to Main Menu            Return to Social History and  Industry

Even though all but the northern part of the parish is underlain by various types of limestone,the cool and wet climate renders the soils more acidic than might be expected. In turn, this acidity sours the grass and reduces the grazing potential of the pastures. The natural acidity of the soil is further increased in places by deposits of glacial clays that form a veneer over the limestone bedrock. Vegetation growth on these clays is poorer in terms of species diversity and nutritional quality. One effective way of reducing - or neutralising - acidity is by liming the soil, spreading burnt lime in powder form over the pastures and allowing rain water to wash the lime into the soil. This process reduces sourness, it stimulates the activity of minibeasts and decomposers within the soil, and promotes plant growth. Ergo, the farmer is happy.

The value of liming soil was known in at least the sixteenth century (possibly earlier) and increasingly so in the two succeeding centuries. By the time of the great Enclosure Movement, when hills and fells were carved up into a network of walled fields, liming was an accepted aspect of best practice in upland farming.

Every parish in the limestone Dales witnessed the building of limekilns, some isolated, others close to tracks. It is virtually impossible, in the absence of documentary evidence, to date these field kilns but it is valid conjecture to suggest that many were put up during the enclosure process. Nine such kilns have been identified across Langcliffe parish (see map): five close to tracks that were once important roads, four remote from any obvious access line. Only three of the nine have survived more or less intact: the rest have had their stone robbed out for use elsewhere and, for some, only the tell-tale hollow remains.

A field kiln consisted of a bowl shaped structure, usually faced with limestone blocks built in dry stone walling style, with a lining of fire-resistant stone or - rarely in the Dales - firebrick (see sketch). The average height of field kilns was five to six metres while the diameter of the top of the bowl was typically about two metres. There were two methods of operation of field kilns in our area: they were either worked as intermittent or running kilns.

In both cases the kiln was filled from the top with alternate layers of limestone, broken into pieces roughly the size of a man's hand, and fuel which was either coal or peat or fuelwood, depending on what was locally available. The coal pits on top of Fountains Fell are known to have sold thousands of sacks of coal each year to kilns in the Settle area and this may well have included the Langcliffe kilns.

The difference between the two types lay in what happened after the kiln had been fired. An intermittent kiln was allowed to burn right through, from top to bottom, before being left to cool down before being emptied through the drawhole. It would have been completely refilled and re-fired, as necessary. Such kilns would have required a week to burn through completely. A running kiln was similarly fired but some burnt lime was drawn out of the bottom after three days or so, while more stone and fuel were added at the top. The fire was not allowed to go out but was continuously fed for as long as its operators required.

The running kiln may well have been more fuel efficient, relying on conducted heat, but the quality of burnt lime was less likely to be consistent as it was harder to maintain a consistent burn. It is axiomatic that a running kiln needed a greater supply of stone than an intermittent kiln, so it may follow that intermittent kilns only served the needs and interests of an individual farmer. He would have quarried and broken stone, and fired his kiln, as and when he needed to lime his pastures. Furthermore, it may be possible to extrapolate from this assumption as to which of Langcliffe's kilns were run on an intermittent basis, by considering the size of quarries adjacent to kilns. Six of the kilns (numbers 1,2,3,4,6 and 7 on the map) have associated workings which are far too small to be described as quarries, and which could not have supported the ravenous demands of a continuously fired kiln. Kiln number 5 is a substantial structure and has more extensive stone workings so it could have been operated continuously (though not throughout the year).

Kilns 8 and 9 stand close together, seem to have used the same quarried area, so may well have been worked in tandem. There is evidence in Craven of kilns having been worked in pairs on a commercial - or selling - basis. One kiln would have been burning away while the other was being cooled, emptied and refilled. The operators enjoyed the benefits of both methods: they were guaranteed good quality lime with continuous production from the two kilns. There is certainly field evidence that kiln 9 was run on commercial lines.

Who would the lime from such commercial kilns have been sold to? There are a number of possibilities to consider. Some farmers did not have access to limestone on their own land,or lacked the means to burn lime, so they were one market. Lime was also required for mortar: the growth of manufacturing in Settle and Langcliffe would have provided a ready market. Burnt lime was an essential component in the tanning industry from medieval times and Langcliffe, along with its larger neighbour, had a significant tanning industry. In addition, burnt lime was required in the textile industry and in paper making and it would have made sound economic sense for these three local industries to have purchased their lime requirements locally.

In the second half of the nineteenth century the demand for lime from manufacturing industries in our growing urban areas was too great to be satisfied by small-scale selling kilns, so various entrepreneurs began to seek out - and to secure leases on - limestone outcrops that could support industrial scale exploitation. The coming of the railways tended to concentrate production in specific locations, and one such was the quarry opened up and operated by the Craven Lime Company around Langcliffe's Hoffman kiln.

Langcliffe's Hoffman kiln is, in a sense, unique in Britain now. Most of the others that once existed have long since crumbled away or been demolished and no other surviving kiln is on such a grand scale as this one. At the time of its construction, the 1870s, this was state of the art technology, enabling the company to produce lime on a much more industrial scale than hitherto and to send lime away by rail to markets in the North East and the industrial West Riding.

Stone was worked in the quarry - actually three quarries in one - broken into manageable pieces and then loaded onto pony-drawn rail tubs to be taken through a tunnel or over a gantry to the kiln.The tramway ran on the ledge that connencts all the 22 chamber entrances. A continuous process of firing the kiln was undertaken. Stone was hand stacked to roof height, leaving spaces for coal to be fed down chutes from above. When a chamber had been filled,it was then sealed from the adjacent chambers and at the entrance. It was then fired. The next chamber was stacked and the heat from the previous, burning chamber would spread and fire along. The next one would then be fired and on and on the job would go. Two fires were lit, at diagonally opposite ends of the kiln, and the two fires chased each other's tail around the kiln. When the stone had been sufficiently burned and allowed to cool, the chamber was emptied by hand and barrowed out of the kiln onto rail wagons waiting in the sunken bays either side of the kiln.

The area around the kiln has changed beyond recognition since the site closed down in the 1930s. The yard area was once a network of rail sidings with shunters bringing in coal and arranging wagons full of lime or crushed stone for onward despatch. At the south end of the kiln,where there is now a squat building, a water balance hoist was used to raise wagons of coal onto the top of the kiln and a circular rail track allowed the wagons to be pushed right round the kiln to the top of whatever chambers required fuel. A massive chimney stood atop the kiln. There were also an engine shed, workshops, stables, offices, stone crusher and a whole panoply of industrial buildings.

In the early part of the last century demand for lime from Langcliffe led to the construction of two steel tower kilns on the site. There was not sufficient room to build another Hoffman and, in any case, masonry had become too expensive and the Hoffman process was by then recognised as being too fuel inefficient to warrant further investment. The steel kilns have long since gone but a massive masonry structure at the south end of the site, and a few scraps of twisted metal, betray their existence.

Eventually, other sites belonging to the company were able to produce high quality lime at lower cost so the Langcliffe site was shut down.

There have been discussions going on for more than a decade as to what the site's future should be. Finally, in the closing weeks of the 20th. century, action to conserve the kiln and to open it up as a low key visitor attraction was initiated: a fitting millenial project indeed.

David S. Johnson     January 2000

Memories of the Hoffman Kiln  1940

They thought they could get it all working. It hadn’t worked since 1930/31. All the valves and taps were all solid. They got it going. It would make lime out of any size of stone. It ran about six months. Then they did an extra firing at Horton,Dibble.

When the chimney was coming down it was a foggy day. Everybody had landed ,bosses and such,who were going to see the chimney come down. Wood were planted underneath. Mr Worthington invited everybody in for a glass. When they went out, chimney had already gone – and nobody had heard it!

Stanley Potts

My grandfather was a fireman on the Hoffman Kiln when it was working. My father was the boilerman at Craven which supplied all the compressed air that run the drills that drilled the holes in the rock. My grandfather was on top of the kiln,he put the coal in the firing holes. They stacked the limestone and fire alternately and the draught used to go round and up the centre of the big chimney. Craven Lime had their own workshops; they mended their own wagons. On top they had a little cabin built on to the to the chimney. I can remember going on as a boy taking Dad’s lunch. On a wild night you could feel it moving. My grandfather had an accident; top part of the kiln collapsed and he went in with one leg and all his trousers were burnt.

They used to bring all their own coal – they had sidings. There were two trains a day. They used to bring the coal in wagons and unload it into skips. They skips used to run into this hoist and it were so simple but so effective. At one end of the hoist they had a rope and at the other end they had a water tank fed from a pipe from a stream in the wood and fill this water tank until the weight of the water tank took the full skip up to the top of the kiln. They run the skip off then put an empty skip on. They opened the tap on the water tank until enough water ran off to quietly let the skip down. The stream ran into a big concrete trough and there was an overflow out. They ran the water to the Lime Works. As lads we used to swim in it.

I had an uncle who was what they called a ‘getter’. In other words he went up and down the rockface boring holes and firing charges to bring the limestone to the bottom for the men to fill the skips. He was three parts up the face when a stone fell from above and split his head open. He was laid unconscious on this ledge. A chap climbed up to him and tied him on a ladder then lowered him down. It was old Doctor Hislop who attended to him.

Alan Cokell

Control+Home to return to top of page