Buxton Lime Firms visited March 09

Due to the Solvay process of manufacturing Soda Ash Limestone Quarries were in demand and in 1891 thirteen quarries within the Buxton Derbyshire area amalgamated in order to benefit from the demand and value. Buxton Lime Firms Co Ltd, as they were called, grew and by 1895 they were mining 360,000 tons of Limestone (calcium carbonate) and producing 280,000 tons of Lime from their 1522 acres of land, 3 Collieries, 89 lime kilns and 21 large stone crushers. They continued to flourish and bought and established nine more quarries in the following 20 years.
By 1918 John Brunner, who along with Ludwig Mond had founded the Solvay Process, was so dependent on the BLF limestone he bought into the company and by 1926 had full ownership. With the merger of all of the businesses I.C.I. was formed.
This quarry must have been one of the smaller ones that was either used just for the stone or closed when the larger quarry at Tunstead increased in size. Exploring the place was interesting, involved a fair bit of climbing and made a great photo opportunity.







The BLF logo proudly displayed on the now stark empty shell


The internals






Further along more buildings emerge from the landscape



This structure is impressive




One of the tunnels leading off from the facade


Inside one of the two tunnels




Further down the track structures with hopper, chutes, pulley wheels and trapdoors



The climb up the landscape to investigate from above



Evidence that a sheep had once lost its footing


After that we climbed further hoping we didnt slip too!








With the climbing completed and the exploration of this echo from the past concluded we dragged our weary bodies back to the car for a well earned rest! Thanks for looking!
For more pics or a larger view of these pics see my flickr page. ​

Various buildings on the site before the lime kilns themselves:

The first building at the entrance to the site & nearest the main road


This next building looked like some sort of canteen/workers room complete with a chimney on the roof!


The third & largest building, some sort of engineering/machine building by the look of some mountings.










Then onto the kilns themselves with large buttresses to the north supporting the kilns.


Train track would have run under the 'arch' for loading from the platform.


The platform is just on the left


Looking off the platform with a small person added for scale


Under each of the kilns were four containers in an archway


Looking outwards from inside one of the arches


On top of the kilns the circular track around the top could still just be seen


Further into the site were some older more derelict structures


Inside the large hopper


Under the hopper were pulley wheels


Through a covered passageway were stairs to the highest part of the structures & our exit today.


Cheers for looking & flickr has more of our pics from this site.​