Lime burning

Today I attended an event which was being run by the Oldknow Project at Marple. We spent the morning and early afternoon building a small limekiln and charging it with layers of wood, coal and limestone. Here it is just after being lit and it will burn for around 24 hours. Next job will be to open the kiln, slake the lime in wet sand and build a wall with the hot lime mortar that this will create. In the background are the remains of Samuel Oldknow's bank of limekilns that are now a scheduled monument.