Bantling Castle Lime Kilns

Summary

Bank of six lime kilns, one of the earliest structures designed by the eminent railway engineer Thomas Harrison, built 1835 for the pioneering railway, the Stanhope & Tyne Rail Road.

Reasons for Designation

Bantling Castle Lime Kilns are included on the Schedule for the following principal reasons:

* Period: as an early example of an industrial-scaled limeworks, one of the first industrial plants in the world that was specifically built by a railway company;

* Survival: as a substantial structure, the bank of six lime kilns forms an impressive feature in the landscape;

* Documentation: for the well documented connection between the kilns and the pioneering Stanhope & Tyne Railway, and the highly significant railway engineer Thomas Harrison, further highlighted in the inscription on the kilns.

History

Burning limestone to produce lime for building has been practiced from at least the time of the Romans, and for agricultural fertiliser since the medieval period, with demand for lime increasing for other industrial uses through the C19. The basic raw material for producing lime is limestone or chalk: when burnt at high temperature (roasted or calcined) these rocks release carbon dioxide, leaving `quicklime' which, by chemical reaction when mixed with water (`slaking'), can be turned into a stable powder - lime. Lime burning sites varied in scale from individual small lime kilns adjacent to a quarry, to large-scale works designed to operate commercially for an extended market and often associated with long distance water or rail transport. Lime burning as an industry displays well-developed regional characteristics, borne out by the regional styles of kilns especially found in East Anglia, West Gloucestershire and Derbyshire. The form of kilns used for lime burning evolved throughout the history of the industry, from small intermittent clamp and flare kilns, to large continuously fired draw kilns often built in large banks that could satisfy increased demand from urban development, industrial growth and agricultural improvement. Small-scale rural lime production continued in the later 19th and 20th centuries, but this period of the industry is mainly characterised by large-scale production and the transfer of technologies from the cement and other industries.

The Stanhope and Tyne Railroad Company (S&TR) was formed in 1832, with leases to quarry limestone at Stanhope and mine coal at Pontop and Medomsley. The railway line opened its first section (between Stanhope and Annfield, just east of Bantling Castle), on 15 May 1834, and was fully opened to coal drops on the Tyne at South Shields on 10 September. The resident engineer was Thomas Elliot Harrison (1808-1888) with Robert Stephenson (1803-1859) the consulting engineer. By April 1835, 50-60 chaldrons (wagons, each carrying about 2.5 tonnes) of lime were leaving the company’s kilns at Stanhope every day for sale at depots down the line. The lime kilns at Bantling Castle, designed by Harrison, were constructed by the railway in 1835 to further increase the supply of lime, probably sited to take advantage of the company’s nearby coal mines, the limestone supplied by rail from Stanhope. However, the S&TR significantly over-estimated the demand for lime and, to cut costs, ceased lime production at Bantling Castle in 1839, the transportation of coal being the line’s main focus. In November 1840 a small London bank, part-owned by one of the S&TR’s directors, failed. This precipitated a crash in confidence in the financial viability of the railway which had been operating on the basis of substantial loans. Newcastle banks refused to extend lending and creditors to the railway started demanding payment, leaving the S&TR £440,000 in debt by the end of the year. Stephenson, who had taken shares in the S&TR in lieu of consulting fees, was almost bankrupted by the company’s failure, however it was successfully wound up, and its assets and operation transferred to a new company, the Pontop & South Shields Railway (P&SSR), in February 1841. The Bantling Castle lime kilns were sold the following year to the Derwent Iron Company which had been established in Consett in 1840, the kilns were restarted to supply the ironworks with lime, working through until about 1850, the kilns marked as ‘old’ on the Ordnance Survey 1:2500 map surveyed 1857.

The S&TR was a pioneering early railway, partly for the way that the company attempted to integrate the operation of a railway line with coal and limestone extraction along with the production of lime: Bantling Castle Lime K ilns represents one of the earliest examples in the world of a railway company investing in other industrial facilities, something that became more common in the later C19. Although the company failed, the railway line passed into new ownership and had a long operating history. Harrison, its resident engineer, the S&TR being his first substantial appointment, also went on to have a long significant career. He undertook detailed design work for Robert Stephenson (Harrison being the engineer responsible for both the High Level Bridge and the Royal Border Bridge) and then in the 1850s overseeing the merger of several companies to form the North Eastern Railway for which he became the long-serving Chief Engineer. One of Harrison’s last roles was as the consulting engineer for the NER over the design of the Forth Bridge, the rail bridge across the Firth of Forth in the 1880s, now a World Heritage Site.

The first edition 1:2500 Ordnance Survey map (1857) and surviving features suggest that the kiln tops were fed via individual wagons manually or horse-hauled about 50m from the railway, presumably along rails. The kilns are thought to have been draw kilns, probably fired almost continuously. However, surprisingly there appears to have been no railway line alongside the base of the kilns: the lime was presumably loaded onto horse-drawn carts instead. The kilns were structurally surveyed by North Pennines Heritage Trust in 2002 and were consolidated in 2009 for public presentation as a feature along Sustran’s C2C cycle route, this including some rebuilding and strengthening works.

Details

PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS: a bank of six lime kilns surviving as a substantial standing structure built into rising ground, the monument including land along the base of the kilns that contains collapsed material from the structure overlying evidence of how the lime was transported away from the kilns.

DESCRIPTION: the kiln bank gently curves, facing south at its east end, and south-south-west at its west end. The top of the kilns is roughly level with the former railway line, running on an incline west-east some 50m north of the kiln bank, this line now reused as part of the C2C cycle route. The structure is built of substantial ashlar masonry and stands up to 7m high, the bank being just over 60m long retaining five of its six draw arches intact, the entire front wall of the third kiln from the west having collapsed. The draw arches of the other five kilns are complete. They are constructed with voussoirs that extend deeply into the structure forming basket arches with a span of nearly 4m. Draw tunnels extend back 4m from the face of these arches, the roof stepping down with three similarly constructed arches to the base of each kiln. In the rear wall of each tunnel is a pair of square draw holes through which the lime would have been extracted. The best-preserved draw tunnel is that of the westernmost kiln, some of the others supported by inserted concrete walling built to stabilise the structure in 2009. The kiln pots are largely infilled with debris, the tops of the pots being exposed and viewable from the north. These are rectangular with rounded ends some 6m east-west by 2.5m north-south. The architectural design of the kiln bank was not purely utilitarian, there being a roll-moulded impost string course that carries over each arch that unifies the elevation, the dressing of the stone below this moulding being finer than that above. Set into the wall head of the centre of the bank, reconstructed as part of the 2009 conservation works, is embossed wording ‘Stanhope & Tyne Rail Road Co Limekilns 1835’ above a weathered inscription ‘T.E.Harrison Esq. Engineer’

EXTENT OF SCHEDULING: this includes the full extent of the kiln bank with an additional 2m margin except along the south side where this margin is extended to 6m to include the full extent of fallen masonry from the structure along with buried evidence of how lime was transported away from the kilns.

EXCLUSIONS: timber fencing, cycle path surfacing and signage within the area of the monument is excluded from the scheduling, but the ground beneath is included.

Sources

Books and journals
Langham, Rob, The Stanhope & Tyne Railroad Company, (2020)

Websites
Brooke, D. (2008, January 03). Harrison, Thomas Elliot (1808–1888), civil and mechanical engineer. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography., accessed 23 May 2025 from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-12452

End of official list entry

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