Lime kilns

 

Before moving on up the Creek to Lewisham it might be interesting to look at some of the older industries along its banks and in the surrounding area as well as some others we have left out. There was one industry which was predominant up until the 19^th century.

In the middle ages the land along the east, the Greenwich side of the Creek was called Lez Brokes and there is a record of a lime kiln here in 1481.  This was operated by Thomas Waller, lime burner of Deptford, who later had a cottage and garden nearby.  The lime kiln was on the site of Mumford’s Mill and what was Hope Wharf and it had gone by 1535.   There were probably other later lime kilns along the Lewisham bank of the Creek associated with the pottery industry.  However lime kilns were ubiquitous throughout Greenwich until the 20^th century – many associated with the numerous chalk extraction sites.  In the area immediately near the creek there was a complex of kilns on Blackheath Hill and nearby  Greenwich South Street was called Lime Kiln Lane, the area generally being known as the ‘The Lime Kilns’.

When I have been on industrial archaeology visits to different parts of the country, I have often been taken to see preserved lime kilns – usually huge stone structures with little reference to why they were built where they were.  Inevitably nothing has been preserved in Greenwich or in fact in most of London – but there is one old lime kiln which you can see not too far away.  This is preserved in Burgess Park in Peckham and it once stood alongside the Grand Surrey Canal.  Burgess Park is largely built on the line of the Surrey Canal and there are several things which remain from it in the park. If you want to see the kiln you can get there on the 53 bus. Get off at Cobourg Road and walk straight down the park, past the lake, cross over Wells Way and the kiln is straight ahead.

The Southwark lime kiln is now Grade II listed. It was built in 1816 by builders’ suppliers Edward R Burtt & Sons. It was used until 1925 and then occasionally until the 1950s. In 2002, it was restored by Groundwork Southwark. Local schools & community groups helped research its past.

What was it for and how was it used?  Coal and limestone was carried to it on the canal by barge – say, about 25 tons. The limestone would be broken into small pieces and put layered with coal in the kiln. It was lit from below and burnt at over 1000˚C. It was allowed to burn for 3 days and allowed to cool for 2 days, on the seventh day it would be unloaded and sent out to customers – again, probably by barge. 

Lime had countless industrial uses and the process for making it dates from ancient times.  It was a key ingredient in the mortar used for building work, as an ingredient in stucco for the exterior of buildings and for lime wash used as a paint. It was also used as an agricultural fertiliser to improve soil by neutralising any acidity. Quick lime was used as a deodorizer and disinfectant.  However we can guess that the Burgess Park kiln produced lime for building work, since it was owned by a building supplies company – and the process by which the lime was made would have been relatively ‘modern’.  A kiln from the early 19^th century would most likely have  been a ‘draw kiln’ running what was almost a continuous process developing from the very earliest kilns which would probably have been temporary structures destroyed after each load.

We know almost nothing about the kiln which stood on the Deptford Creek site in the 15th century. We can assume that it, and other kilns in the area, used chalk as their raw material – and the pits all the way down Blackheath Hill and the surrounding area are where that came from.  Although the basic process was the same a medieval kiln may have been managed differently or been built to a different design.

The process was dangerous and produced bad smells and smoke. Limekilns were not found in town centres but insolated areas on the outskirts.  On Blackheath Hill and Deptford Creek they were away from the centres of Greenwich and Lewisham and near the sources of their raw material as well as means of transportation.

The Steers family have been mentioned in various books and articles in connection with the Blackheath Cavern under The Point. They were lime burners here over three generations; William in the 17^th century was described in official documents as ‘a lime burner’, as was his son Thomas, and then later his grandson Innocent.  Jane Steers was a ‘lime merchant of Lewisham’ in the 19^th century.  Another local lime merchant advertising his works at Sun Wharf on the Creek was James Smith who had a coke and grey stone lime works.

There is a history of deaths around lime kilns - rough sleepers might use them for find warmth on a cold night and fall into the burning mass – as well as suicides. There are frequent newspaper reports of accidents where workers tripped and fell. If I was to get really literary I would mention the death of Jim Holliman who falls into a lime kiln in Henry Williamson’s novel ‘The Beautiful Years’.  Williamson was brought up in Lewisham and may well have just seen the last of some of the local limekilns.  

There are also newspaper reports of young women taken to the vicinity of the kilns for purposes of seduction - presumably because of the isolation. Sadly the girl might find herself pregnant and end her days in the kiln by suicide or murder.   

In the 1820s an American inventor called Jacob Perkins is said to have used the Blackheath Hill lime kiln area for experimenting on his steam gun; which was no doubt both noisy and dangerous.  This was a fully automatic machine gun, powered by steam rather than by gunpowder. Although not the first automatic firearm, it was the first to also have a magazine capacity of more than a handful of rounds. It operated with musket balls at a firing rate of 1,000 rounds per minute. Perkins had asked John Penn & Sons, millwrights and engineers based just across the road in Coldbath Street, to make the gun for him. John Penn entrusted the work to his son, also John Penn. The steam gun with its wrought iron rifled barrel of 3 inches calibre Greenwich proved to be as efficient as Perkins had hoped during trials at the lime kilns but it is said to have been rejected by the Duke of Wellington as 'too destructive'.

The local settlement named after the lime kilns was farther on the site of what was later Trinity Church and which is now the Undercliff flats. There are said to have been at least three kiln sites in this area. One of the lime burners here was an Elias Wood with a site on the Lewisham side of the road opposite Maidenstone Hill - presumably in the area where The Horse and Groom pub stood. People may remember that in the late 1990s the pub suddenly collapsed from being a three storey building to a two storey one. 

Most of the lime produced on Blackheath Hill will have gone off to its customers on barge from Deptford Creek. The New Cross Turnpike Trust recorded their intention of getting Mr Wood, Mr. Steers and Captain Hammond; all lime burners, to pay towards the costs of maintenance of Blackheath Hill. This was because of the damage done by their carts to the road surface on their way to the Creek. In 1739 they wanted to install a special toll gate to recover costs from the lime burner – this had particular reference to Innocent Steers.

Lime burning was a major industry until the mid-nineteenth century when cement began to be used for building and better fertiliser developed. There are abandoned lime kilns all over the country, although few in London. Locally we were made more conscious of it in 2002 when Blackheath Hill collapsed dramatically and the extent of the burrowing and mining and removal of chalk and stone from the hillside became only too clear.  Since then there has been more local interest - for example in the now defunct Underground Greenwich web site and more recently by David Waller who has published an article in Subterraenea and given an influential talk to Greenwich Industrial History Society. Christopher Philpotts in his work on the archaeology of the Creek pointed out the existence of several kilns. There were probably many others.