With the mammoth off on his presentation duties it seemed strange to be heading out without his constant chatter and the cracking of pistachio shells. Although he had told me…. numerous times…. that I was to go nowhere until his return I had decided to ignore him and take Alfie the Dog on a little adventure.
As we arrived in the small town of Llanymynech we were in one of the border towns between England and Wales, the local pub had one bar that was under the Welsh laws and one under the English. The Sunday Closing (Wales) Act 1881 required the closure of all public houses in Wales on Sundays. The Act was repealed through the Licensing Act 1961, which allowed local authorities in Wales to hold polls of their residents on the continuation of the ban. By 1996 all local government areas except Dwyfor in north west Wales had voted in favour of opening licensed premises on Sundays, and that year changes in local government boundaries resulted in the removal of the last ban. For this pub it had been simple, they had merely opened the English bar and left the Welsh one closed until the law changed, I imaged that they had done a similar thing during the lockdowns.
Having parked the car Alfie and I wandered along a wooded trail where the small trains would have once run taking huge rocks from the hillside behind us to the Llanymynech Lime Kilns. Built in around 1753 it was the centre of the lime industry until the early 20th century. It is not known when the lime industry started here, but it dates back to medieval times or possibly earlier.
The stable block was our first sighting with its beautifully preserved boiler, once it would have been a busy area as horses were collected for work and the men had their brew. The sound of hooves on brick and the snorting and neighing would have been wonderful.
Slightly further along was an area that had once housed the stone crusher which had been removed in 1900 after the closure of the kiln.
Continuing along the pathway we came to our first view of the high chimney standing at 42.5 metres (139 ft) high, its red brickwork soared over the tress and the original kiln below it.
Up a steep set of steps we found the Hoffman kiln which had been the last major development on the site built in 1890, along with additional tramways and rail track. The kiln, measuring around 44.8 × 17.5 metres (147 × 57 ft) and has two tunnel vaults entered through 14 round-headed arches.
It was an interesting building with its sloping sides and funnel like look inside, sadly by the time it was completed the kiln was obsolete and unable to produce the good quality cheap lime required. I tried to imagine the heat that must have come from it when in operation, lime work was not a liked profession and many men died from work related accidents.
Having admired the small minecarts we walked further into the woodland finding ourselves at the Tally House where the carts would have been weighed and the money worked out for the miners.
Alfie raced through the small tunnel where the carts had once trundled bringing the stones out of the hill side on a gravity balanced incline and I could just see where the tracks would have run before they started the climb upwards.
It was a peaceful place to be as we walked onwards crossing several small brooks before arriving at the canal which had joined the kilns to the waterways system in 1796, I chuckled to myself as given the amount of vegetation there was little chance of getting the dog through let along the narrow boats that would have once passed this way.
As we crossed a meadow we arrived back at the car and the small town and a slightly clearer piece of canal where a memorial stood to the men who had given their lives to the lime. A lovely and interesting walk, I wondered what my small friend would have thought of it and hoped that he would forgive me for going against his orders.