Looking back: Black Hill's lime kilns and Pembrokeshire's imports

MARK MULLER tells us more:

They also, in part, surveyed the coast in a bid to reduce piracy and to ascertain where a possible landing site might exist that the Spanish could use for an invasion.

Few Port Books survive and they often contradict each other, but Barbara George made a detailed examination of what remains in 1964 with ‘Pembrokeshire Sea Trade before 1900’. Further information can be gleaned from George Owen of Henllys in his ‘Description of Pembrokeshire’ (1603) and Richard Fenton, ‘Historical Tour of Pembrokeshire’ (1811).

The lime kiln at Black Hill

Having examined, last week, what was being exported, it is pertinent to see what was being brought into the county. The Port Books reveal that wine was a major incoming cargo, much of it from Gascony in south west France where it was loaded in Bordeaux and dispatched to Bristol, from where it came as a re-exported commodity to Pembrokeshire.

Salt, from the earliest days, was an essential incoming item, as it was elsewhere. By 1600, raisins were making an appearance, as was butter, hops, soap, brass, pewter and pitch. Rope appears from time to time.

As well as exports and imports, a huge amount of trade was carried on internally, with small ships travelling a regular service within the county.

Lime is a massive topic that spans centuries and international geography. Used from earliest times as a mortar, it became as equally important as a fertiliser.

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Lime kilns would have been built next to major new developments to produce the necessary mortar, but they required limestone to be brought to them, to be crushed and then burned.

Besides limestone, the essential ingredient for this process was coal, with layers of each placed in the kilns and brought to a temperature of 1,000 degrees. As well as being used for mortar, stone buildings had a coat of limewash painted on them, partly to add some protection from the elements and partly, in the case of castles, to impress.

As the practice of lime being used as a fertiliser increased from the 16th century onwards, the habit developed of bringing limestone to an area where there was lots of coal, or conversely, bringing coal to areas that had an abundance of limestone.

This being so, we have Black Hill, between Hook and Haverfordwest, where limestone was brought from the quarries of West Williamston, (which supplied not only much of the county but international customers as well) and burned in an enormous kiln that had easy access to coal from the Hook area.

The lime kiln at Black Hill showing the lantern position for night working

A plus for lime burners and colliery owners was that culm could be used in lime kilns, thereby using up the cheaper, less popular product of anthracite mining.

Once produced, the lime had to be transported to farms, either by boat, if practical, or more generally by cart, which produced, by the mid-19th century, the Rebecca Riots, initially a protest by famers carrying lime, against tolls on roads charged by less scrupulous turnpike gate owners, and which developed into riots focused on the horrors of the Workhouse system.

Lime kilns dot both sides of the river for almost its entire length and many places, such as Black Hill, developed into mini industrial centres that were multi-functional.

High tide at Black Hill

Alongside the river, Black Hill had a quay, two sandstone quarries that had ‘canals’ cut into their centre allowing easy loading at high tide, a huge lime kiln, two cottages (that appear on old maps as, ‘Holywell Back’) that kept livestock, and long, wide lanes, that led north or south, plus, of course, the river.

The huge tidal range of the Cleddau (29 feet between high and low tide) means that at high tide it appears impressive and majestic and nose to tail nonstop traffic can be imagined. At low tide it shows itself as wide mud shelves with a trickle of water in the middle. Nevertheless, it remains beautiful in any state.