A little mooch from a couple of months back that I completely forgot to post! I really liked this place, it had some interesting graffiti and was strangely peaceful.
Standing on the edge of the canal in Harefield stands Harefield Limeworks. It is known locally as the Hanging Monkey due to the large plush monkey hanging from its exposed steel frame over the canal. The Limeworks would have used chalk quarried from the surrounding hills and processed it into lime and quicklime to be used for concrete and agricultural purposes. The lime industry in Britain experienced a boom throughout the 18 and 1900s, before the advent of modern cement. Lime was used in many industries from construction to burials! There isn't much history about Harefield Limeworks that I can find, but it seems to follow the same story as the other Limeworks I've visited and seems to have shut down at around the same time in the early to mid 1990s. Mostly demolished, just the steel framework of the main factory building exists supported by two standing walls. A small section of a mezzanine floor exists but is no longer accessible. Twin cylinders cross like a bridge towards the hill, with an old conveyor that would have carried the crush chalk and limestone into the factory to be processed. The factory would have been accessible by road and by canal. As we were leaving I noticed a planning notice nailed to a telegraph pole nearby, this piece of Britain's industrial history was set to be demolished completely to be replaced with housing. The locals had been campaigning to save the structure, but as far as I know this was unsuccessful.
Standing on the edge of the canal in Harefield stands Harefield Limeworks. It is known locally as the Hanging Monkey due to the large plush monkey hanging from its exposed steel frame over the canal. The Limeworks would have used chalk quarried from the surrounding hills and processed it into lime and quicklime to be used for concrete and agricultural purposes. The lime industry in Britain experienced a boom throughout the 18 and 1900s, before the advent of modern cement. Lime was used in many industries from construction to burials! There isn't much history about Harefield Limeworks that I can find, but it seems to follow the same story as the other Limeworks I've visited and seems to have shut down at around the same time in the early to mid 1990s. Mostly demolished, just the steel framework of the main factory building exists supported by two standing walls. A small section of a mezzanine floor exists but is no longer accessible. Twin cylinders cross like a bridge towards the hill, with an old conveyor that would have carried the crush chalk and limestone into the factory to be processed. The factory would have been accessible by road and by canal. As we were leaving I noticed a planning notice nailed to a telegraph pole nearby, this piece of Britain's industrial history was set to be demolished completely to be replaced with housing. The locals had been campaigning to save the structure, but as far as I know this was unsuccessful.
