Description: At the beginning of the 19th century the Ticknall Limeyards were operated by two different classes of people, namely freeholders and tenants. Some of the freeholders in the parish had their own limeyards while others were worked by tenants for the Harpur-Crewe and Burdett families. As the century progressed the freeholders went bankrupt for various reasons while the tenants of the Harpur-Crewes gave up because of the high rents charged and general mismanagement of the limeyards.
Website contributor Ron Stringer very kindly relates the following:
An ancestor of mine was blinded by an exlposion at the lime workings. He was about 23 at the time and was in the Almshouses aged 71 in later census returns. He was also a guest at a birthday party for a lime burner named Cope, and was reported to have sang to entertain the party goers and read from the Bible using 'Mr Lucas's System'. This was a method of reading using raised symbols similar to shorthand and which predated braille.