An Irresistible Offa in Llanymynech

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Walk 60 - 90 mins Rating: ★★★★

2.73 km/1.7 miles Difficulty: Easy

Take a walk through Llanymynech’s heritage centre and find out about lime loving Common Spotted Orchids, the history of the Hoffman Kiln and the im-portance of the Montgomery Canal. A trail that offers amazing views and an informative and interesting narrative.

Ready to go?

An Irresistible Offa in Llanymynech

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Park in the car park near to the canal.

Walk through the silver gate at the edge of the car park entering the Heritage Site.

Stay on the path following it round to the left and to-wards the stables.

Section 1The Canal, The Stables, The Stone Crusher and The Railway.

Please take care whilst enjoying this trail there are many low entrances, potentially slippery canal banks and un-even surfaces.

The first chapter of this walk (till you reach the tunnel) is accessible for all, the terrain is largely flat and the major-ity of this area is on surfaced track.

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The Canal

A horse-drawn canal boat was the super truck of the day.A horse could haul 20 tons of limestone in a canal boat, but only a ton of limestone in a cart.Canal boat horses were looked after overnight in stables belonging to the former Sun Inn. These have now been converted into the Llanymynech Wharf Visitor Centre.

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The Stables

Horses, Mules and Donkeys pulled trucks of stone on tramways around the quarries and lime works.They were housed and fed in the cobbled floored stables. Recent excavations have revealed piles of worn out horseshoes, discarded by the blacksmiths. The stables and former lean-to Hay shed have been converted to provide an educational resource room. There are also facilities for learning about the use of lime and a working demonstration limekiln.

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The Stone Crusher

What remains here is the solid base of a stone crusher and its driving engine. To the right of the crusher’s remains is the engine pit for an air compressor. Compressed air may have been piped up the quarries to power pneumatic drills.

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Continue forwards up the English Incline, pass through the metal kissing gate.

Travel upwards until you arrive at the Drum House at the top.

Section 2Short of breath.. Outstanding views

This part of the trail includes some opportunities for amazing views.

The climb up the incline to the Break Drum House is hard going, but there are places where you can rest on the way. The Kissing Gate that you reach half way up the hill is a good point to stop and catch your breath before the last little climb.

Once you have reached the Break House Drum, follow the trail to the right (there is a small climb here, but now that you have made it up the steep incline it will be a piece of pie)

At the top you will see another Drum, just to the left you will notice that the path veers of to what is one of the most spectacular view points on this walk.

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The Tally House

The tallyman recorded the weight of each truck of limestone carried from the quarry and directed it to the kilns, the canal or the railway sidings.Each truck would contain a tally, a brass token en-graved with a team master's special number.

Using this token or tally the Tallyman kept a record of each team's output. It did not pay to annoy him by letting a cold draught into his nice warm office.

Teams of quarrymen were paid according to how much stone they delivered – a system known as piece rate.

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The English incline

Looking up at the English Incline you are at the bot-tom of a gravity balanced incline, an ingenious sys-tem used to shift stone cheaply and easily down the steep slope from the quarries to the limeworks. Look out for stone sleepers with holes in for pegs to fix an iron “shoe” which held the rails in place. Grooves were worn into the stone where rope and later iron cable rubbed as trucks went up and down.

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View point

The area is now rich in wildlife, in particular lime loving orchids, wild clematis and butterflies. There are peregrine falcons on Llanymynech Rocks, Great Crested Newts in the former lime works area and the Hoffman Kiln is inhabited by several bat spe-cies.

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The Drum House

The Brakeman (often a young boy) controlled the de-scent of the limestone filled trucks. The downward pull of the heavy stone filled truck, connected by a cable wound around the break drum to an empty truck lower down, was enough to pull the empties back up the hill for refilling. Two paral-lel sets of tramway track were needed to keep the trucks apart and to ensure that they ran evenly.The partially covered gully leading from the break drum house to where the brakeman stood con-tained a system of rods and pivots that tightened or released the break mechanism around the drum.

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Section 3The Hoffman Kiln

Follow the path to the left through the open tunnel where the railway once stood and take an immediate right towards the Kiln.

Feel free to explore the Kiln itself before returning back to the car park.

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The Welsh incline

Looking down the Welsh path you are at the top of a gravity bal-anced incline, an ingenious system used to shift stone cheaply and easily down the steep slope from the quarries to the lime-works.

Look out for stone sleepers with holes in for pegs to fix an iron “shoe” which held the rails in place. Grooves worn into stone where rope and later iron cable rubbed as trucks went up and down.

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Hoffman Kiln

Freidrich Hoffman originally took out a patent in Germany for a brick firing version of this type of continuous burning ring kiln. In 1867 the design was adapted for burning lime and was later im-proved.

The Kiln is a “Warren” modification, although fuel efficient, the Hoffman Kiln was labour intensive. In 1914 with the outbreak of war, able men were in demand and unpleasant limekiln work was unpopular.

The limeworks and rail sidings closed and for the next 60 yeaers the Hoffman Kiln was used as a cattle shed and became a roost for bats.

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The Chimney

This 40 metre chimney was used to help draw the heat and the smoke through the kiln. The top was extended to make it work better.

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This element of the project was created by Powys County Coun-cil through the Walking With Offa project.

Walking with Offa is a project that is bringing together different strategic rural development and tourism bodies along the English-Welsh border to promote walking and sustainable trans-port along either side of the Offa’s Dyke Path National Trail. The partners, including four protected landscapes, are working to-gether to develop more circular walks and to improve access across the 177 mile trail, which runs along King Offa’s 8th cen-tury earthwork border.

For other walks created by Powys County Council through the Walking with Offa project please download our app at:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/trails-mid-wales/id555963994?mt=8

For an alternative longer walk in Llanymynech please download this pdf :

Credit and Thanks

Joan Zorn and Martyn Young for your input and knowledge,

The team at Hot Lobster for creating the bespoke picnic benches,

David Owen for photography and creativity

Warren Osborne for illustrations

The team at Geosho for your support.

Many Thanks – Samantha Bibb Macgregor

Project Officer for Walking With Offa / Tourism Marketing and Development Officer

Samantha.bibb@powys.gov.uk