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In a wide ranging talk, to the October monthly meeting of the UWHG, David Johnson, author, and chairman of the Ingleborough Archaeology Group, presented a different and unexpected aspect of his detailed and rigorous research into the history of lime and lime processing.
David highlighted numerous locations; within the “Gritstone areas” but never-the-less, lying well outside the usual “limestone” belt of the central Pennines, where quantities of lime had been processed in industrial activities spanning over 600 years.
He challenged the more usually held notion that the lime production industry was a rather narrow based geological and geographical process, and by utilising a wide range of well illustrated examples, he clearly demonstrated that this was far from the case.
Limestone had been exploited, he suggested, far and wide beyond the confines of a landscape that supported a limestone bedrock and a range of early records were offered that underlined the diversity of locations distant from the areas of traditional extraction and production.
Evidence of lime kilns stretching far along the communication arteries leading into West Yorkshire and Lancashire was presented, transportation routes for both unprocessed ‘raw’ limestone and treated lime were outlined, such as the “Limers Gates” from Lothersdale to Calderdale and from Clitheroe to Rochdale – each a major routeway in their period.
David also dwelt on the sources of limestone remote from its point of origin and how, following on from the actions of the Ice Age, deposits of limestone had been recovered far down the valleys, where the effects of glacial action had moved large quantities ‘down-stream’.
Moving onto the process of hushing, a practice more usually associated with metallic mineral extraction, David illustrated a variety of locations where the use of suddenly released water had been employed to wash away the over burden and expose limestone ‘cobbles’ - miles from their original source, leaving a landscape scarred and disturbed - very much as the once rich lead-ore hillsides of sections of the Dales.
The 17th century was, he argued, a time for extensive limestone gathering and processing within these wider gritstone areas, with huge sections of moorland having rights granted for the extraction of limestone and the discarded material from these workings, he demonstrated, was still to be found in the sheddings – huge piles of sandstone waste.
Water carried limestone, river-born material, down the major rivers flowing through landscapes of limestone bedrock, had also been worked with a variety of examples – such as Addingham and Pool along the Wharfe, and locations along the Cover and Dee rivers further to the north.
The well attended meeting then had the opportunity to ask a variety of pertinent questions to close an interesting and informative evening.
Phil Carroll (UWHG Information Officer)
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