I'm a secret Epicurean...

Clearly, I'm in a philosophical frame of mind recently! I've recently come across something else that I find fascinating, namely classical philosophy and the study of the purpose of life. 

The aim of my blog post here is not to discover the meaning of life, but to discuss what other folks have thought of as the purpose of life. I would like to differentiate between these terms, because while they appear to mean the same thing, I rather feel in this context they need to be separate. In the OED, "purpose" is used as a synonym for "meaning" along with "significance" and "underlying truth", yet the entry for "purpose" defines the word as an "object" to attain. So the "meaning of life" encompasses more than just its "purpose". 

Aristotle, one of the greatest of the classical philosophers to have come down to us, has quite the controversial view on the subject, as he does with many ideas. According to Aristotle, the ultimate objective of human life is happiness and well-being, which does sound rather blissful, don't you think? This is not what is controversial about his views, however. The best way to attain happiness and well-being is through leisure, or more to the point, 'leisure well spent'. So what is leisure?

In today's society, 'leisure' is often defined in negative terms as the time left over after work. In everyday life, we define ourselves by our jobs and professions, "Hello, I'm Mark, I'm a civil servant", not "Hello, I'm Mark, I like reading, the opera, and visiting interesting places. I fund all this by being a civil servant". To Aristotle, however, leisure was a very positive thing. Broadly speaking, leisure is any activity that one does for its own end - if there is some ulterior motive for doing anything, then it is not leisure. So if you go running to get/stay fit, you are not at leisure. If you go to work to earn money, you are not at leisure. If you play games to relax after a day of work, you are not at leisure. In fact, games are specifically described in Politics as being almost a kind of medicine that is required - after a day at work, you need to relax your body or mind in order to bring it back into balance. 

Added to this, there is a 'function' to being a human being, in the same way that other things have functions - flautists and sculptors being his examples in Nicomachean Ethics. The function of the human being is then described as the exercise of reason, as everything else humans do - eat and grow, sensing the world around us - we share with animals and plants. It follows from this idea that there is a human function that it is possible to be good at being a human, and to be bad at being a human. Aristotle tells us that the function of the lyre-player is to play his instrument, but to be an excellent lyre-player is to play that instrument well. On this premise, then, to be a human is to exercise reason, but to be an excellent human being is to exercise your reason in such a way that is 'good and admirable'. 

This is all well and good, of course, but Aristotle then makes several controversial claims about who in society can be an excellent human being, the answer being only a select few. Children, it is assumed, have not yet learnt to exercise their reason well enough, so will never be excellent human beings, but rather chauvinistically, he claims that women, while capable of making rational choices, are never very good at acting upon them, so will also never be excellent human beings (it might be worth noting that the Greeks thought "hysteria" a disease of the womb, at this point). He goes on to explain that slaves do not use reason, and some people are 'natural slaves' who will never make a rational decision in their life. This is paralleled in modern society by the idea of "some people are leaders, some are followers" - these followers are the sort of natural slaves who will never become excellent human beings because they do not exercise their reason, they just go along with whatever anyone else tells them. 

The only people who are capable of being excellent human beings, therefore, are the people with enough leisure time to pursue reasoned, intellectual matters, and to reflect upon them. Because to pursue an intellectual matter in and of itself has a purpose, of course - to learn about said matter - and so is not a leisure activity. But when you know the subject matter, and you reflect upon it in a philosophical way, then you have become an excellent human being: you are pursuing the real purpose of life. 

It all seems very grand, doesn't it? 

By contrast, the philosopher Epicurus has a much simpler, but much more all-encompassing, view of the purpose of life. According to Epicurus, the purpose of life is to obtain a healthy body and a tranquil mind. Quite in keeping with Aristotle's first notion of the purpose of life as health and well-being, really. It is a very idyllic picture, wouldn't you say? To shy away from pain and to dedicate oneself to the pursuit of pleasure, who would balk at that? Certainly not a hedonist like myself, let me tell you! But of course, there is more to it than that. 

The exercise of reason is still a valid requirement of the human being to Epicurus, but not as an end in itself, but in order to weigh the pains and the pleasures, and to see whether some pain is perhaps necessary in order to attain greater pleasure at the end. The notion that one must work in order to then have the money to live comfortably comes at once to my own mind here. A notion that is refuted by Epicurus' further claims that the best life is the simple life. Pursuing pleasure unfettered can lead to a dangerous road, one of debauchery and gluttony. One of the biggest aims of the Epicurean is to be content with what one has, to become 'accustomed ... to simple and inexpensive foods ... [so that] when at intervals we approach luxuries we are in a better condition to enjoy them' (from the Letter to Menoeceus). Almost utopean, you could say.

This check on what is pleasure is necessary, I suppose, because pleasure means different things to different people. I said before that I enjoy going to the opera, and I derive great pleasure from that. But to someone else, they may think of going to the opera as barely a step above Chinese water torture, and would liken the sounds coming from the stage to the results of such. But suppose someone derives great pleasure from killing people, or from theft, or other such negative acts. Should we try to stop them? Do we have the right to deny someone else pleasure, if the pursuit of pleasure is the purpose of life? Surely, to deny them this, we may as well kill them now, for we are denying them the purpose of being alive. 

Philosophy is of course replete with such ethical dilemmas. I am hardly original when I present my own view, that people should have the right to pursue pleasure so long as it does not interfere with someone else's rights to the same. By killing someone, you are denying them the chance to pursue pleasure, so while it may give you pleasure, it is wrong to so. However, if you happen to be the kind of person who derives great pleasure from killing, and you happen to meet someone whose greatest pleasure would be to be killed, then get to it and be done with. The separate can of worms that deals with mental capacity is not going to be dealt with here, though this line of thought is certainly a fascinating one.

The simple life is something that continued on into Imperial Rome, both Cicero and Horace were great Epicureans. The idea of having luxury every day will desensitize you to it, and possibly even drive you to further and further flights of fancy. Life is to be enjoyed from the simple things, a yearning that is present in most people, if we're honest with ourselves, to this day. Certainly, to have every day off work would lead to boredom, but to have the weekends only makes them times to be cherished and to look forward to them. This leads to the idea that to have unbridled choice is to have no choice at all, which I won't get into right now. 

For Epicurus, everyone can be an excellent human being, because even children will instinctively shy away from pain but respond well to pleasure. 

The pursuit of pleasure leads into the idea of American philosopher Robert Nozick of "The Experience Machine" - a device where you can float in a tank while neurological machines stimulate your brain into thinking you're experiencing whatever you want. You can pick and choose whatever you damn well like, "plug in", and away you go. If you're worried you might miss out on the real world, you can come out at intervals, catch up on latest developments, then program your next stint. It sounds good, no? 

"No" is my answer! 

To abdicate from your life in such a manner seems utterly unconscionable, and as our old friend Aristotle would say, you'd be reduced to a plant, as you would no longer be exercising your reason, or even sensing the real world around you. You'd have choice, of course, but if everything always goes exactly the way you want it, you'd get bored, surely? Where's the fun of trying if you know you're always going to succeed? You may as well just say "Yes, I've achieved my life's aims, I've done x, y and z, and wasn't it amazing!?!" then immediately shoot yourself. You'd die thinking you'd done them, without ever having lifted a finger, which is precisely what Nozick's thought experiment is all about, to my way of looking at it. 

So I heartily disagree with Aristotle, only inasmuch as the purpose of life as defined by him seems too narrow to my way of thinking. Epicurus, however, presents a view much more in keeping with my own personal thoughts on life. To pursue pleasure is admirable, and so anything done in that pursuit is to be commended. For one, I enjoy learning about new ideas, or discovering old ones as the case may be. It is an activity which has a purpose, so would be dismissed by Aristotle, but because it gives me pleasure, I'm sure I'd get a big thumbs-up from Epicurus. But the tedium of trying to get my head around some fairly huge concepts is part of the pleasure of discovering these ideas, I wouldn't want to miss out on all that by abdicating my life to "The Experience Machine", no thank you sir! 

 - . - . - . -

I am forever indebted to Jon Pike and Carolyn Price of the Open University, for passively introducing me to these wonderful concepts. A big thank you to you both!

Sacred Stones?

I'd like to take a moment out for this, the twelfth post on my blog, and present you with something that I have recently been looking into, and which I hope you will find as interesting as I have. Apologies in advance for the rambling nature of this blog...

I presume we all know about the great stone circles of Stonehenge and Avebury, perhaps even the Ring of Brodgar up on mainland Orkney, but Britain today is peppered with so many prehistoric sites that are so often overlooked in favour of the 'big three'. Nobody precisely knows what these monuments were used for, all we really have are educated guesses, some more convincing than others. Within the last few decades, though, a group of people has been slowly emerging, claiming these sites as their own, which has often led to some pretty controversial clashes with the authorities who now maintain them, and can lead to some very thorny, but no less interesting, questions about the whole thing. 

Before I begin, I'd just like to point out two things. Firstly, I am no expert on neo-paganism or the Alternative Culture. Secondly, I do not mean to offend anyone, but I realise that where religion, history and philosophy meet, some strong feelings can be brought to the fore. 
Onwards!

First, I'll just make some (very brief!) description of the main sites. Stonehenge is of course the famous circle of stones, wrongly-named as a henge denotes an earthen bank and not a stone circle. From it, there is an avenue that bends around and follows the River Avon, eventually arriving at the incongruously-named Woodhenge and nearby Durrington Walls. The latter is an enclosure where, it has been proven, at least one massive gathering of people has taken place, from the midden deposits there. Woodhenge, just across the road from Durrington Walls, is a concentric series of post-hole circles, now denoted by concrete pillars, that perhaps formed the house of a wise-man or similarly important person. This interpretation has some flaws, as we have no real solid evidence that prehistoric society was hierarchical. 

Nearby Avebury is the biggest stone circle in Britain, within which there are two smaller stone circles, both of which have some element to differentiate them. There is an avenue that leads from Avebury, running to a further, smaller circle at The Sanctuary. Nearby is the largest man-made mound in Europe, Silbury Hill, whose purpose is entirely unknown. As at Stonehenge, the whole landscape is peppered with long barrows and cairns. Avebury, perhaps significantly, is situated very close to the Ridgeway, a prehistoric trackway that is roughly the equivalent of the M6 in terms of today's traffic flow. It is believed there is a second avenue, opposite the West Kennett structure, though the existence of this is disputed.

Up in Orkney, the Ring of Brodgar is part of a further ritual landscape that encompasses what is being described as a neolithic cathedral on the Ness of Brodgar; the Standing Stones of Stennes, and the massive chambered cairn of Maes Howe. Nearby are the settlements of Barnhouse and, a little further off, Skara Brae. There are standing stones and chambered cairns all over the place here, as well. 

As I said above, nobody knows what the purpose of these megalithic monuments was. They have, over the years, been the focus of interest that has shifted from the notion of Avebury as a centre for devil-worship to praising the construction of Stonehenge as an outstanding human achievement. Or perhaps extra-terrestrial achievement. But I won't get into that. Whether Stonehenge and Avebury are ceremonial gathering-places to commemorate certain events, or whether they are ceremonial monuments to commemorate certain people - or whether they are the mundane market squares of their day - nobody can actually say with authority. The now-accepted theory by historians and archaeologists is one that Mike Parker Pearson put forward some years ago, that the Stonehenge landscape forms part of a massive ritual commemoration of the dead and the ancestors. 

An interesting feature of the Standing Stones of Stennes is that archaeologists have discovered that a hearth was once in the middle of these. The theory has now been put out that chambered cairns like Maes Howe were once homes of important people who, once dead, were commemorated by being buried in their own homes, the structure being built over as a memorial to the dead within. 

The vast array of long barrows and other funereal monuments that dot the countryside of Britain like smallpox are, I think, evidence that our prehistoric ancestors did indeed like to commemorate their dead. Most of these monuments are communal affairs, used by an entire settlement rather than just one person (such as happened with the pyramids of Egypt), although a shift does begin to occur during the Bronze Age, with definite evidence for that hierarchy beginning to emerge. However, at the time the great stone circles were constructed, it appears they were done so as a communal enterprise, a group of people undertaking this work for their own ends, not those of one person. Whether those ends were to commemorate the ancestors of a community, to stamp their own authority on the land, or to commune with the stars or the sun (or extra-terrestrials), we just don't know. What we do know is there were no burials at Stonehenge. As far as I'm aware, there has been no unearthed evidence to suggest any sort of festival at Stonehenge, unlike that held at Durrington Walls a mile or so away. 

Which brings me onto the modern-day use of these sites. Heritage bodies such as Cadw and English Heritage, both subsidised by the government, call themselves the guardians of these places, etc. The National Trust, which has a presence at Avebury as well as EH, holds places "in trust for the nation". They do not claim to own the sites. However, access to sites like Stonehenge is restricted, which brings about complaints from many special-interest groups who claim these monuments for their own. I'm talking now of the various faith groups and religions that have been spawned from the New Age and are more commonly grouped together under the term "Alternative Culture". 

I don't really like these terms, I have to admit. "Alternative" often sounds like it isn't to be taken seriously. In this instance, you would have the "traditional" religions of Britain, and then these "alternatives". But I'll have to stick with them, as they have been accepted as the terms to be used in these circumstances. 

Neo-paganism is a decent-enough umbrella term, I find, to encompass all forms of paganism, druidism, Wicca, Goddess-worship and the like. Many representatives of these religions and faiths find a kinship with prehistoric monuments, and claim a direct lineage from the people who made them. Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge seem a bit misplaced, though, if archaeological evidence is to be taken into account. The festivities would be better placed in Durrington Walls. The cynic in me thinks such people wouldn't find it as exciting to celebrate in what is, essentially, just a field, as they do to be up close to one of the most remarkable survivals of the prehistoric period. 

A person's religious practices should be entirely in sympathy with that person, of course, so I'm not trying to dictate devotional terms. I just feel the neo-pagan appropriation of Stonehenge (and other such sites) for religious purposes is really no different to me walking into your house and demanding to be allowed to use it for my own religious purposes once every six months. I think it's great that ancient sites are having a new lease of life and are being given new meaning, but sometimes I wonder whether that meaning is perhaps misplaced. 

The negative image of neo-paganism is of course coloured by many extraneous factors, perhaps the biggest being the influence of the Christian church. I think it is now widely proven so as to be accepted that the early Christian church, in order to gain ground with new followers, subverted what might be called "traditional" practices such as druidism and linked them directly with devil-worship, misrepresenting the pentagram as the devil's sign, etc etc. This process had, of course, been instigated when the Romans began their expansion, and the druids were still seen as a major threat, being the major religious leaders in Britain and France. The Romans, of course, successfully integrated themselves with a native population's religion by drawing comparisons between it and their own, and when no comparison could be made, they simply adopted it into their own pantheon - Sabrina, the goddess of the River Severn, is a fabulous example of this. 

At the very least, by declaring yourself to be a pagan of one description or another usually results in an eye-roll and maybe a half-hearted remark about being a "tree-hugger" or something. This avenue of attack has been so successful that it has lasted over 2000 years in the human conscience, even today the first thing most people associate with such an image as the pentagram is occult rituals and Satanism. Readers of The Da Vinci Code should know all about this! However, I don't really think many people do themselves any favours when they commit acts that have the potential to forever damage such sacred sites. 

A specific instance comes to mind when I visited the burial chamber at Tinkinswood, near Cardiff in South Wales. The tomb had clearly been used the night before to some purpose or other, with a mass of tealight holders left in almost every recess possible. Surely by now everyone knows that rocks cannot cope with excessive heat? Burning candles on monuments like this puts the stone at risk of cracking, and when coupled with a metal tealight holder, which conducts the heat better than wax, it just makes matters worse. To say nothing of the damage such acts can do to the lichens that grow on these stones today. For a culture that purports to respect all life, it is something of a double standard. 

^ Tinkinswood Burial Chamber, an evocative sight in the early morning mist...

^ ... but with an interior littered with the detritus of the 21st century. 

Ceremonies did take place around burial chambers such as these, of course, outside the tomb, possibly as part of a funeral ceremony, or perhaps on commemorative days throughout the year. There is no evidence to suggest ceremonies took place within the tombs, however. And I'd like to point out that candles have only been in use from about 200BC, long after such tombs ceased to function in such a way. 

I'm always curious as to why such religious groups have such a kinship to the ancient structures while seeming to provide none of their own. There is a school of thought that dictates a sacred space is only sacred because we as humans make it so, and a counter school for whom sacred spaces manifest themselves to us, and we merely formalize the sacrality of that space. For groups who believe in ley-lines and places with inherent Qi etc, I would have thought the pursuit of such spaces would at least be of minor interest. 

Certainly, the existence of ley-lines have led to the massive popularity of Glastonbury with the New Age movement. A site of specific historical importance anyway, the myths of Arthurian connections that surround this otherwise quaint little Somerset town have led to immense interest from all sorts of faith groups, both "traditional" and "alternative". The picture painted in Glastonbury is one of tranquil harmony, with Catholicism and Crystals living side by side, with each respecting the others' right to be there. Jerusalem could perhaps take a lesson from this? 

There does appear to me, though, to be an element of a "manufactured tradition" to this. The counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s has seized upon the neolithic past as a way of distancing itself from the norms of that time, much the same as Ireland throughout the 20th century has done in an effort to wipe the slate clean of what was seen to be British colonialism and instead forged strong links to its Celtic and neolithic past. In order to remove links to an Anglican Christian society, people have looked first to the religions of the Orient, then back to their own native religions of pre-Christian times. The only problem being we have no idea what form that religion took. Trying to explain sites like Stonehenge is, as Francis Pryor points out, like trying to explain the Christian cross without knowing the story of the crucifixion. In the absence of fact, a search for a plausible truth has borne out what we see today, trees literally smothered by ribbons that are meant to honour nature but will probably end up killing the tree they bedeck. 

Is there, then, a third way? Demonstrating your religion seems to be a very medieval attitude, when you could be killed for not conforming to the religion the state has decided is right. Is it not enough that you believe, that you also have to prove to other people and demonstrate that you practice religion x? As well as having much in common with missionary religions like Christianity, it also seems again a relic of the counter-culture movement, where visible protest was the order of the day. You must be seen to be doing something. It isn't enough that you know, yourself, that you believe. Is it not enough to see a tree and appreciate it for what it is, and then move along? Do trees not produce enough of their own decoration, that you have to add some piece of manufactured rubbish in practising a religion that claims to honour the supremacy of nature over all things anyway? It all seems a bit bizarre to me. 

The neolithic sites of Britain are, unquestionably, evocative sites, that speak of a remoteness of time that is inspirational to many. I find many of these places to be "sacred", in terms of the way in which such places should be treated. There is also a remoteness of space for a lot of these sites. While Stonehenge is (currently) situated between two busy A-roads, and some chambered tombs are rather incongruously situated (Carreg Coetan Arthur Burial Chamber stands out as being in the middle of a modern housing development), others are hidden away, tucked into little corners or sited high on hilltops up and down the country, generating a lot less traffic than perhaps they would otherwise attain (instantly I think of Mitchell's Fold Stone Circle in Shropshire), and that makes them a special place when you finally find them, making them a "sacred space" anew. 

Ah, Shropshire - Llanymynech!

Ah, here we are again - continuing my Summer of Shropshire with a slightly incongruous entry, with a trip to the Llanymynech Heritage Area. I can get this into a Shropshire blog because Llanymynech straddles the England-Wales border, so at least half of it belongs in this mini-series extravaganza. Onwards! 

Llanymynech, meaning "church of the monks", is on the border of Shropshire and Powys - the border actually ran directly through The Lion pub, so that when pubs in Wales were closed on Sundays ('dry'), only two-thirds of the pub could serve alcohol. It also has the only golf course in the country to straddle two countries. But you probably don't want to know about that! 

^ the village and surrounds from the quarry.

The reason I visited is as follows. Llanymynech has one of three surviving Hoffmann Kilns in the UK, and the only one to have a chimney still standing. This is a very important site, which I shall explain in the fullness of time...

Llanymynech is rich in history dating back possibly to the late Bronze Age, with one of the largest hillforts in the UK (now largely taken up with the aforementioned golf course). There is also a Roman copper mine and numerous moated sites dotted around. Nobody can tell exactly when limeburning began at Llanymynech, although a reference from 1754 states there were "a great number of limekilns" here. The nearby limestone quarry, together with an abundant supply of coal from the Ruabon, Oswestry and Chirk Coalfields made it a hive of activity during the second half of the 19th century - it was the increase in use of Portcastle Cement at the end of the century that most likely contributed to Llanymynech Kilns closing down in 1914, a story repeated up and down the limeburning country.

Prior to the Montgomery Canal being constructed between 1794 and 1821, lime would have been burnt on a small scale. With the canal network opened up a massive new market and so the kilns at Llanymynech grew accordingly. 

^ the canal wharf at Llanymynech.

The limestone quarry is now Llanymynech Rocks nature reserve, a very pretty place that put me in mind of the beginning of Indiana Jones 3, when the scouting exhibition is going through Utah or wherever they are. It's quite a staggering site, to climb the track incline and suddenly have the eyes assaulted with the mass of jagged quarry workings, particularly on a sunny day, with the rock almost glowing and dramatically set off by the blue sky. Yes, I'm waxing lyrical.

Eternally mindful of the dangers of disused quarries, I nevertheless wandered around with unabashed awe (to the extent that, nearly five hours later, I've still got neckache from craning up to look at the rugged tors of rock... ahhh, there I go again).

  

The whole site just looks so impressive, doubly so because it hasn't flooded like a lot of other quarries tend to, being as it is halfway up a mountain, rather than at the bottom of it. Very impressive, anyway!

I succeeded neither at finding the Roman copper mine or the hillfort, from where Caractacus was meant to have made his last stand. Instead, I found the most incongruous site I could think of, rounding the corner from scrubland and thorn bushes growing from the dislodged rock and muddy footpaths was Llanymynech Golf Course, mentioned above. All manicured green grass and flying balls, why anyone would want to play golf at such altitudes I don't know - what if you hit your ball too hard and it plunges to the bottom of the cliff? Do you halt play for the next hour or so while you try to find it again? Bleah. 

Anyway, I found the whole experience of wandering the edges of the outcroppings a little vertiginous to say the least, so I wasted little time in retracing my steps into the quarry and back to the Heritage Area around the Hoffmann kiln...

 

^ The kilns surviving at the edge of the quarry workings.

While the quarry itself contained lime kilns, a pair of trackways was constructed in 1837 which brought the lime to the kiln bank ready to be transported by canal. Each of these trackways had at its head a Drum House to control the descent, and so as more of the quarry was worked new Houses would have been built to decrease the transport within the quarry. 

^ one of the drum houses, I think it might be the western, or "Welsh", one.

^ the restored eastern, or "English" drumhouse.

At the foot of the incline, before the carts got to the Limeworks, there was also a Weighbridge built at Tally House, presumably to get figures for the production of lime at the Works.

The whole area here is criss-crossed with old rail tracks, often confusing the issue as to where the carts were going:

Llanymynech Limeworks began on the large-scale with two massive vertical draw kilns. I've visited kilns dotted around the place that are fairly large, and indeed there is a bank of draw kilns at Minera that are fairly extensive, but these two at Llanymynech are monsters, particularly given how the entire building is just one kiln. As was usual, they are top-fed with a draw-hole at the front for slaking out the lime.

The Hoffmann Kiln was the last construction at the site, sometime around 1900. The Hoffmann Kiln was patented in Danzig, Germany in 1858 by Friedrich Hoffmann, and was designed for baking bricks. The idea was for having a continual fire inside (the design is sometimes referred to as the "Hoffmann Continuous Kiln") and pallets of bricks were placed inside each "room" and baked as the firing wagon passed. They were then removed and re-stocked while the wagon baked some more, and so the process went. 'Non-developed' countries still use the design for brickmaking, with kilns in Iran on a continual fire for 35 years (according to our friend, Wikipedia).

It wasn't long before the design was used for burning lime, with the English Patent by Humphrey Chamberlain filed in 1868, shortly after which he built a kiln at the Meal Bank Quarry, in Ingleton, North Yorkshire. The first kilns were round as per Hoffmann's initial design, but later an elliptical rectangle was used, as the Llanymynech kiln was. 

Size was dependent on the strength of the industrial area: Llanymynech has 14 chambers, so that at any one time: one was empty, one was being filled, five were pre-firing, two were being fired, four were cooling and one was being emptied. 

To the left of the chamber doorways are flues to feed the firing course within the kiln, all of which lead to the 42.5m chimney.

The Hoffmann Kiln as designed in Germany fed off petroleum or natural gas, but coal was still used to channel the fire around the kiln: when one chamber is sufficiently fired its flue was closed and the next opened, with the coal bringing the fire into the next chamber. 

There were holes in the roof where the charcoal was fed ("charged") into the kiln, and so it was covered with a corrugated iron roof. The original roof has long gone but a new covering has been provided when the Heritage Area was created by the local authorities and CPAT. Marvellous!

^ no, that's right, there really are lots of 'metal men' dotted around the site - this one in particular really freaked me out when I first came back and saw him!

I must admit, I have no idea how many lime-burning Hoffmann-style kilns there were in Britain during the industrial heyday, but now there remain just three: at Staylittle, in Yorkshire; at Minera, near Wrexham; and here at Llanymynech (as stated above, however, Llanymynech is the only one with the chimney intact). 

Despite the exhausting climb to the top of the quarry, and the battering winds that threatened to blow me the entire 225m back down to sea level, I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience and can heartily recommend going to Llanymynech to anyone who will stand still long enough to listen to me!

Bottom line: it's a free day out - winner!