Brading

Location:

Clinker manufacture operational: 1882-1894, 1905-1915, 1920-1925, 1926-?

Approximate total clinker production: 50,000 tonnes

Raw materials:

Ownership: the plant passed through many hands, not all of which are named.

A lime plant seems to have been established on the now-silted Brading Quay in the 1860s, perhaps using chalk from Portsdown. There were three small lime kilns yielding around 25 t/week of lime. Evidently attempts began at making Portland cement in the 1880s. The earliest mention of this is in 1882. The plant evidently needed chalk from the nearby sources, brought in by rail, and the plant’s activities petered out (twice) amid acrimony about freight rates for this. Dry process equipment was sold in 1892, and it can be assumed that the original kilns used dried briquetted meal, and was converted to "thick slurry" wet process at that time. The plant was up for sale in 1894 and was being sold by the liquidator in 1897. The bill of sale shows four bottle kilns, capacity 80 t/week. The plant was re-built with chamber kilns before its re-start in 1905: it had four small kilns, capacity 40 t/week. Davis' 1907 list includes it, with zero capacity. It was closed during WWI, and before the re-start in 1920, a fifth kiln was added. There seems to be some confusion about later history: a Brading cement company persisted until after WWII, but this was just a selling organisation, associated with BPCM, of which the Brading plant was never a part. The plant was on the Bembridge branch of the IOW Railway and this must have been used for most transportation. Subsequently, the site was used as a concrete products plant, finally closing in the 1960s. After closure, the plant site was abandoned, and slight ruins, including the base of the kilns, remained until recently, but are now built over. The quarries are overgrown.

Power supply

No information.

Rawmills

No information.

No rotary kilns were installed.

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