THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — the Findon Chronicles are created by Valerie Martin and contain great stories from her home village of FINDON, West Sussex, U.K.    Everyday tales about real people...... in fact, a potted history of the village.

THE SCAR ON THE LANDSCAPE (Beeding Cement Works)

Cement Works at Upper Beeding, near Shoreham c.1910.

Copyright Valerie Martin 2010

Looking eastwards from Cissbury Ring, no one can fail to see a scar on the landscape.   I remember it in the 1970s as an industrial site, the Cement Works at Upper Beeding near Shoreham.   In those days the surrounding area being covered in dust..... encompassing the row of house next to it.   

Going back a little into history.... and rather interestingly, there was a limestone quarry on the site as long ago as 1851.  I am sorry I haven't come across any images of those days and so we can only imagine it with carts and perhaps a horse or two and men in gaiters.  

This photograph is c. 1910 and one depicts the men taking a break from building the workers' cottages (Dacre Gardens) next to the Cement Works.

Eventually, the Cement Works was in two parts..... split by the main road with a tunnel connecting the two.   The west side housed the main entrance to the distribution plant and admin offices.    The east was the industrial quarrying site.  The last segment of activity was conducted until 1991 so I can say that the quarry going for over 150 years.   

At the end of the day, the owners were under no obligation to demolish their buildings, nor restore the landscape to it's original state.    Production just ceased and the structures were abandoned in the most derelict and disgusting state to blot the countryside and the area was rife to speculation...... and still is.

John Stepney of Findon worked at the Cement Works and gives us an insight as to its workings...

"The dust, which was often bad came from the chimney stack - nothing to do with chalk dust.   Most of the dust was trapped before going up the chimney directed by chutes into covered lorries and about every hour the full lorry was taken to Horton and tipped in the pit from where the clay was extracted.

The bricks in the kilns were repaired as necessary, usually when red hot patches appeared on the kilns indicating the lining had crumbled. After a kiln was stopped it was about 12 hours before men could get inside to inspect and repair the brickwork.

The chalk was not fired in the kilns but was first ground into a slurry in vast tanks.  Clay was then added to the slurry.  The slurry was fed into the kilns and came out as very hard clinker.  The clinker was ground together with gypsum - brought in by the railway - in large rotating drums which had about 5 sections in each.  Each section was about half filled with metal balls.  Large balls about twice the size of tennis balls in the first and getting smaller in each section.   This gradually ground the clinker to the fine powder we know as cement. The large round grinding mills were about 12 feet in diameter. The kilns nearer 20 feet diameter.

The cement works closed in the 1970`s.  I worked there from about 1965-1970.      JS"

I remember it as a noisy, sprawling place..... it must have been all of those metal balls grinding around.   I didn't appreciate what was happening at the time.

The photographs do not graphically display the awful pervading dust on the landscape.    For anyone who did not know the area in the past, I would explain that the Cement Works were out in the countryside on the main road,A283, between Shoreham and Upper Beeding and were in their day a major employee for the area.

Continue if you would like to read about Captain W. S. (Bill) Jaeger in Screaming Bill.
 

THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — www.findonvillage.com is a continually growing record created by Valerie Martin exclusively for documenting life around Findon.