Lime quarry

ref: www.kouroo.info  Fall1996_StephenFElls.pdf "Henry Thoreau and the Estabrook Country: A Historic and Personal Landscape", Stephen Ells, Note 31.

It is worth reading the referenced paper - 86 pages, of which the lime quarry is just a reference. A few of my selected notes from the reference:

• The quarry was in operation in the late 1600s and early 1700s.
• Lime was mined for cement and plaster. It could be used as flux in the bog iron process. It is noted in the article that there is no indication that this lime was used for iron manufacture, but there was a bog iron operation further west in Concord.
• Description: "eight pits, as wide and deep as 10 feet, and up to seventy feet long, following beds of marble that stand vertically and pinch out at both ends into thin seams"
• Fenn school project: estimated that workers excavated 7,600 cubic feet of limestone and rock from the largest quarry, and hauled to the kiln located a quarter of a mile south"