Hoffman Lime Kiln – England’s best preserved lime kiln just outside Settle
- timbarber
- 5 minutes ago
- 6 min read
As I drive around the limestone country in the Yorkshire Dales, I often see the remnants of small lime kilns dotted around the landscape. (In fact I blogged about the Toft Gill Lime Kiln in Nidderdale in 2001 – link to that blog at end of this).
But, The Hoffman Lime Kiln just outside Settle between Langliffe and Stainforth is on a completely different scale and size, whilst being a great location to explore especially going inside the large lime kiln itself.
The limestone in the local area when burnt creates a lime oxide. This white powder often just known as lime had been used for generations to “sweeten” the local farmland. This basically helps neutralise some of the more acidic soils found on gritstone higher up the fells or just make soils produce better quality grasses for grazing.
Lime was also used in small quantities in papermaking, creating mortar, sugar refining, steel production, making lime wash and even chocolate making.
Lime production had previously been limited to smaller scale production, as the small number of coal measures in the Dales provided poor quality coal and there is not very much woodland left for burning with many trees having been felled already to create pasture.
This all changed with the coming of the Settle and Carlisle Railway. This meant that better quality coal could be transported to the area easily and more cheaply, then the finished product could be transported out in greater quantities.
The Langcliffe Quarry site with its lime kilns benefited hugely from the coming of the railway. I explored the site with my son and it has a great little trail around the site which really helps bring the heritage of the area to life.
As well as the former quarry itself, the site has three different types of industrial lime kilns. There are two Spencer Kilns, a bank of Three Draw Kilns and the giant Hoffman Lime Kiln – the best preserved lime kiln in England. The site is now designated a Scheduled Monument, meaning it is so important from a heritage point of view that it will be preserved for future generations.
There were originally two lime works on the site – The North Ribblesdale Limeston Company and Lime Works (Known locally as Murgatroyds) and the Craven Lime Company, with the later eventually taking over Murgatroyds. But why were they based here in Ribblesdale?
The answer lies with the huge limestone cliff which sits next to the road and behind the lime kilns. Known as Stainforth Scar, many people would assume it is a natural cliff, but its actually the old quarry face and the source of the limestone which was burnt in the kiln. Gun powder and explosives were placed in holes in the cliff and it was blasted to create rock falls.
After the initial blast a man called “a bearer” had the dangerous job of hanging from the cliff top with a chain wrapped around his thigh, knocking the loose rocks off the cliff face before the men below could start their work.
Once all the loose rocks had fallen, men with heavy hammers known as “breakers” would smash the larger pieces into rugby ball sized pieces of rock and then men known as “fillers” would load the rock into carts by hand from which they were rolled along tramways to the kilns.
The cliff face is 50m high and to give it some scale here is a photo of my son and I in front of it from the car park.
From the car park, we first headed to the Spencer Kilns first patented in the 1800’s by William Spencer. We climbed up a very steep track which turned out to be a 1 in 3 incline which carts were pulled up a tramway to deposit limestone and coal into the kilns. It is believed that their vertical metal cylinders with chimneys on top were 90ft tall.
Basically limestone was fed into the top, coal in the middle and burnt lime was collected at the bottom. As the limestone and the coal was kept separately, this kiln produced a purer type of lime than the earlier Hoffman Lime Kiln.
Plus you can make out here part of the supporting stonework for the two Spencer kilns.
We then retraced our steps back to the car park and walked down to what was a curved building, but as we got closer you started to realise was a large lozenge shape stone building. This was The Hoffman Lime Kiln.
This kiln was patented by German inventor Friedrich Hoffman in the 1850’s and built under licence here in 1873.
The lime production on this scale hadn’t been seen before. The Hoffman Lime Kiln actually had 22 individual burning chambers which allowed limestone to be burned continuously at the site. Burning took place in a 6 week circuit with different chambers burning whilst finished lime was collected from others.
Unlike the Spencer kilns, limestone was stacked by hand in the burning chambers and coal was mixed in with the rock. More coal could be added once burning started by sending it down small chutes into the chambers.
It was an efficient process as whilst one chamber burnt it heated up the limestone blocks in the next chamber. The chambers were lined with firebricks to withstand the intense heat and there were flue holes at floor level to allow oxygen in. Two or three chambers were left to cool at a time and lime collected in railway carts and sent along a trackway from the kiln.
You can still see some of the tufa, solid calcium deposits on the chamber entrances looking like the sort of thing you would expect to see in a limestone cave.
One of the interpretive boards talked about how dangerous working with lime was as it can severely burn your skin, especially when wet. Apparently the men collecting the burnt lime tried to cover most of their skin and smeared any exposed skin with goose fat or lard to protect their skin from blistering.
The smoke from the burning would have travelled along a central core before being released up a chimney. The chimney remained until 1951, but due to it being unstable elaborate plans had been made to demolish it with large crowds expected to witness the event. Sadly, after bad weather the night before the chimney came down without anyone witnessing the event.
Maybe worth mentioning if you are an arachnophobic that a rare cave spider lives and breeds in the Hoffman Kiln so worth avoiding if you are not a fan of spiders!
Outside the lime kiln, there is a small stream where the water is still milky due to the lime in the water. This runs along the side of the old railway line which was built to transport lime from the kiln back down to the railway sidings in wagons pulled by horses along rails.
Finally as we moved further down the trail we came across the third type of lime kiln which was the most early type of kiln on the site. It was run by the North Ribblesdale Limestone Company which went bust after the Carven Lime Works company started producing on a larger scale with the more efficient Hoffman Kiln.
The base consists of three tunnels leading to three separate bowls which were part of one structure. Each tunnel had a brick wall at each end from which fired lime was drawn out of the bowl through iron doors. Limestone and coal was dropped in through the top of the kiln They could be fired all together or independently.
It stood just above the Settle to Carlisle Railway for ease of loading.
Cheap imports in the 1930’s caused the Craven Lime works with the Hoffman Kiln and the Spencer Kilns to close in 1931 with 90 workers losing their jobs, they re-opened briefly in 1937, but were shut down again in 1939.
The area around the now abandoned quarry has now become home to a nature reserve with rare plants and an array of wildlife. The cliff is home to a pair of peregrine falcons, a rare bee orchid is found on the quarry floor and roe deer can often be seen nearby.
If you want to visit the site yourself to explore – it is situated off the B6479 about 3/4 mile north of Langcliffe village. When level with the paper mill turn right up a lane leading under a railway bridge. Follow the lane to a junction and go right to a signed car park.
The previous blog on the Toft Gill lime kiln can be found here https://www.realyorkshireblog.com/post/toft-gate-lime-kiln-a-window-into-nidderdale-s-industrial-past
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