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THE KILNS

The kilns are a beautiful masonry ruin, full of buried treasure (we think).
They stopped operating in the 60s and the roof collapsed inwards before the mid-1980s. If the mill is anything to go by, there is a lot to find under that roof.

We don’t know much about the kilns from any research but some “living memory” recollections have shed light on its operation and appearance. The hipped roof was (at least in the later years) a patchwork of materials and the intermediate floor was a web of metal rods. Instead of the usual “kiln tiles” this kiln building had metal sheets perforated with holes and turned upside down to avoid grain falling into the fires. The holes were, of course, punched by hand by the kilnman, who was incredibly precise in his handiwork. We’re hoping to find some of these sheets in the rubble.
We also understand a little about how the kilns operated towards the end of their life. The horse-drawn carts would make their way round the South-West path to offload the grain at the curved ramp to the North. The grain was carried into the top floor store room with one kiln straight ahead and the other to the right (the rooms below these were the fire pits). From the kilns, spouts would take the dried grain down into the room below the entrance and out the door facing the mill - straight up the causeway into the millstone level.

As the kilns will never be kilns again (can you imagine the insurance bill if this was restored authentically?), we would like to turn the building into a circus / artist studio. It would involve consolidating the masonry and keeping as much of the stonework as possible. A new structure that might double as a rig, would be erected independently of the existing walls. Anything that would rise out of the masonry would be lightweight or transparent, with some areas of glazing and some of charred wood or… guess what? Perforated metal.

I can just imagine the views from that trapeze…

For the sake of consistency, priorities for up to spring 2023 are:

  • Vegetation clearance / management 

  • Propping of SW rounded corner that seem to have crumbled internally 

Works done in 2023:
 

  • Temporary removal of the "spire" 

Works anticipated in 2024:

  • Vegetation clearance / management 

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