Making lime from cockleshells

The soils of Galloway are generally poor and so in the past they were improved by the application of lime. The Rev C.H. Dick, in a book published in 1916, quoted a description of making lime from cockle shells at Baldoon, near Wigtown. He says he is quoting a description of “Symson,” a clergyman, who watched the process “more than 200 years ago.” He comments: “The information might be useful if one were cast away on a desert island.

Symson wrote: “On the banks of this Park, that lyes opposit to the sea, if there be in the winter time any high tides and storms from the South East, the sea casts innumerable and incredible quantities of Cockleshells, which the whole shire makes use of for lime, and it is the onely lime which this countrey affords. The way of making it is thus: Upon an even Area (the circumference they make less or more, according to the quantity of shells they intend to burne,) they set erected peits [peats?], upon which they put a layer of shells a foot thick or more, and then upon them again lay peits, and so, stratum super stratum, till they bring it to a head like a pyramis; but as they put on these layers just in the center, they make a tunnell of peits, like a chimney, hollow in the middest reaching from the bottom to the top (just almost as Evelyn describes in the making of charcoal;) this done, they take a pan full of burning peits, and put them down into this tunnel, or chimney, and so close up all with shells. This fire kindles the whole kilne, and in twentie-four hours space, or thereby, will so burn the shells that they will run together in a hard masse; after this they let it cool a little, and then with an iron spade they bring it down by degrees, and sprinkling water thereon, with a beater they beat it, (or berry it, for that's their terme; this word they also use for threshing, and so call the thresher of their corne the berrier) and then put it so beaten into little heaps, which they press together with the broad side od their spade, after which, in a short time, it will dissolve (they call it melting) into a small white powder, and it is excellent lime.

“I have heard good masons say that, as it is whiter, so also it binds stones together surer and better than stone lime itself.”

This last point makes one think of Saint Ninian, who brought Christianity to the British Isles in the fifth century and who built a church at Whithorn, Galloway. This church was built of stone, at a time when all buildings were made of wood. It shone famously and could be seen for miles, particularly from the sea. Could this brilliant white have been the result of using the cockle shell lime described above?

p 204-205. Highways and Byways in Galloway and Carrick, by the Rev. C.H. Dick. Macmillan and Co Ltd. London. 1916. Illustrations by Hugh Thomson. 1916.