Search results for ""Author Dr David Johnson""

Across much of the country buildings have been made of brick, rather than stone, from the Roman period onwards. High-status buildings of the Tudor and Stuart eras were often built of clay brick, but it was only in the nineteenth century that the use of brick in rapid industrial and urban development saw a massive increase in brick production. Mechanisation of the various processes, along with the development of new kiln technologies, enabled this increase in output. Age-old clamp kilns were replaced by kilns capable of turning out thousands of bricks per week. Because bricks had a very low individual unit cost, and because so many were needed for each new building, brickmaking was always a localised industry: wherever suitable raw materials occurred close to the intended market, brickworks would spring up. The thousands of sites that existed at one time or another have mostly been swept away and brickmaking now is concentrated in relatively few sites. This book explores the history of the brickmaking industry and looks at production sites from the past and the present.

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Ever since people began cultivating cereal crops 10,000 years ago grain had to be ground down, or milled, into flour to make bread. Up to the Roman period in Britain this could only be done using simple hand querns but, over time, technology improved by introducing circular, horizontal millstones powered by water or wind. Other trades needed the means to crush raw materials to produce their final product: vertical grindstones were used to crush bark for use in tanning, pulp softwood timber to make paper, crush apples for cider, or pulverise gorse for animal fodder. Millstones and grindstones were roughed out in small quarries and on hillsides wherever suitable stone outcropped, and the evidence of this rural industry can be teased out by examining abandoned ‘roughouts’ that litter many upland areas and by searching for tooling marks. This book explores production sites across North West England and along the Pennine chain, where millstones and grindstones were sourced from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century.

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For centuries lime was an essential ingredient in many aspects of life and work - such as farming, building and manufacturing - and the kilns in which lime was produced were a familiar sight across the country, not just in areas where limestone naturally occurred. The importance given to the industry is illustrated by the number of painters, notably Turner and Girtin, who chose to paint lime kilns either as the main focus or as an incidental element, and by the number of literary figures who brought lime burning into their novels. Lime Kilns: History and Heritage starts by discussing the uses and importance of lime, and how it has been portrayed artistically, then describes how lime kilns changed over time, from simple clamp kilns through small farmers' and estate field kilns to large commercially operated kilns. It is illustrated with contemporary and modern photographs, paintings and plans drawing on examples from across Britain. David Johnson has published and lectured widely on lime burning and is regarded as an authority on the subject.

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The exploiting of stone in Cumbria dates back to the Neolithic period when volcanic rock from the high Lakeland fells was worked to make hand axes. In Roman times sandstone was extensively quarried for building Hadrian’s Wall and forts like Carlisle. The industry expanded in the Middle Ages as stone was needed for high-status buildings like castles, tower houses and monasteries as well as for bridges and, later on, for dry-stone walls and road building. Cumbria has a wide variety of rock types that proved suitable for building and other uses, and quarry workings, large and small, can be found across the county. Countless abandoned quarries exploited limestone, sandstone, flagstone, slate, granite, sands and clays and gypsum, and quarrying was a major local industry in the fells, along the west coast and on the Pennine edge. For many centuries, men laboured in difficult and dangerous conditions, in all weathers and in very remote locations, to supply increasing demands for stone products, many of which were exported. Some quarries still operate today, supplying markets across the country. The story of how stone was won is an important part of our disappearing heritage: this book explores the rich legacy of quarrying across Cumbria.

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