Burning the bones of the earth
The eye of the great lime kiln burns brightly, a fierce red against the black winter sky here in the Ripe heart of the Sussex Downs. Some say it is the great goddess of the underworld herself, harnessing the power of fire in her great stack of brick to burn the bones of the earth. Over 1000 degrees heat, as hot as Hel's devouring mouth, enough to strip the flesh of the lime burner in an instant if he gets too close. As hot as the sun, low in the sky at the start of Yule.
Here in the magic of the lime kiln, spitting, hissing, the fire of this alchemy connects us back 2000 years to when the Romans landed at the request of the Atrebates, just the invitation they were seeking to extend their empire. An outward facing Celtic tribe, the Atrebates were already trading with their cousins in Roman Gaul over the grey Channel waters, their prosperity and power threatened by warring tribes from the North and East. Now they were client kings in Sussex and Hampshire.
When the lime kilns arrived, this ancient craft was at least 5000 years old, having migrated from the lands around what is now Turkey. A transformative, alchemical process to turn the acid earth of bog and clay into fertile farming country; to whitewash and sterilise houses and dairies, to tan animal hides, to blind the eyes of enemies, to make cement and to eat away at the flesh and hearts of dead prisoners to prevent the rot setting in.
One thousand years later, the Normans took the art of lime burning to Ireland. The landscape there is still littered with the cracked stacks of lime kilns. Ancestral roads keep leading back to the Emerald Isle.
Remember your grandparents, Aoife and Strongbow, the Battle of Waterford and Dermot McMurrough at Ferns. Yeats dreamed of their bones and now we are burning them. Here lies Henry Hylands, your great, great, great, great grandfather, also of ancient Irish stock, long come to Sussex centuries before, keeping warm and keeping watch over the burning of the bones.
Once the kiln is carefully and artfully stacked (a tough job, as ‘Sussex marble’ or winklestone, and chunks of fine chalk rock from the surrounding downland is brought by cart to be loaded in layers), Henry has to light the furnace and stay awake. He must ensure that the fire spreads evenly and keeps burning for the next three to four days, before cooling for another two.
Keep watch through the night, don’t sleep too long, or else you'll miss the firebird at dawn fetching her wing from the kiln’s magic eye.
Then the quicklime has to be raked out, careful not to get it wet or else the noxious, explosive fumes will make the breath turn to blood from the lime burners nostrils.
The alchemy, the alchemy, the alchemy of lime. Black smoke, red fire, white slaked chalk. It digs into the folds of the great mother, kisses her earthy lips, sweetens them with its magical gloaming brightness, feeds her nutrients released from fossils and shells in the great she-belly of Hel.
Up Henry climbs to the top of the stack with the bottle of moon-charged holy water from the local spring clutched to his breast, to sprinkle, bless and pray to the burning of the bones with gratitude for a safe passage through this winter’s flame and flare.
May we tend it well,
May we burn it well
May no danger befall us.
The traditional prayer of the lime burner.
Henry’’s call was answered. He drank a gallon of beer that week, staunching his lime burner’s thirst. Henry lived and worked the lime in Sussex around Laughton, Ripe, Chalvington and Pevensey over a lifetime spanning 79 years. At Chalvington, the 17th century Limekiln Farmhouse still stands to this day.
Henry died in April 1858, having witnessed his son Walter Hylands, one of seven children, become a merchant sea captain, a master mariner. Walter sailed the waves, harnessed the wind, and reeled in the catch, as he commanded both fishing smacks and two-masted brigs between Shoreham and the great ports of Wales, Ireland, Liverpool and beyond. Cargoes loaded with the industrial gold of coal and timber, and possibly even lime. Walter was born in Laughton in 1809. There in the limestone walls of the 12th Century parish church, you can see fragments of fossils shining out from the weathered Sussex marble.
Water, earth, fire, air
Water, earth, fire, air
Water, earth, fire, air
Water, earth, fire, air
Keep doing the work.
Pay your respects to the dead.
Pay your respects to the dying.
Keep remembering,
the burning of the bones of the earth.
The power of fire,
the power of sea,
conditions were hard,
you come from strong stock,
step into your strength.
listen to their teachings,
listen.
Keep remembering,
the burning of the bones of the earth.
The world is on fire.
Further listening and reading:
Burning the Bones of the Earth.
An RTE 1 radio documentary based on an unpublished memoir and tells the story of the life and work of a lime burner- seen through the eyes of two told by Matty McCaulife from Kerry and ‘the limeburner of Churchill’ - an imaginary village between Macroom and Charleville in Cork.
Articles on lime kilns:
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/09/lime-kilns.html
Listen to an audio recording of this piece
Sussex marble or winklestone, weathered over 900 years on the side of Laughton parish church