Cil-yr-ychen Lime Kilns

The oldest group is at the left, with battered font wall and a row of 6 large pointed-arch openings at ground level, forming an arcade. Above each arch is a pair of pointed-arched machicolations supporting a projecting brick parapet which is pierced by small quatrefoil openings in line and circle patterns. A crowning cornice has deep indentations in the manner of a corbel table. Set back to the right-hand is a complex part probably altered and architecturally incomplete, also in Moorish style with triple pointed-arched machiolations over the left kiln, a gap, then incomplete triple-arch machicolations over a second kiln, a blank bay with incomplete quadruple machicolations, and finally a third kiln with completed quadruple machicolations. None in this set has a crowning cornice. This probably is the limit of the kilns built by Penson. In line with the latter group and to the right-hand again is a strongly battered single-arch section of plain design containing three kilns, probably phase three, of the Penson and Southern period, and finally a tall phase four unit of three arches in concrete containing two kilns, probably mid C20, only decorated with a string course at the base of its parapet. Penson's original kilns are a departure from the universal design of the period, in which access is gained to one or two points at the base of the kiln by means of tunnel-like working arches. Penson's kilns are arranged on a principle of all-round access, like industrial corn drying kilns; in the six-arched first set there are only two kilns, but they are each dischargeable at three points. (The design is more radical than the industrial kilns at Penally near Tenby). Kilns nos. 3, 4 and 5, however, in the second set are conventional single access kilns. Kilns 6, 7 and 8 in the very battered structure are single access, but the last two in the concrete structure are dual access.