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Kiln - Clamp, field, updraught, downdraught, flare
- a building which is in effect a large oven. Can be constructed for a variety of purposes
from drying bricks to burning limestone.
Often forms an important part of a mill or distillery
group where they are used for drying or malting grain, and are distinguished by large roof vents.
In brick making, clamp kilns, also called field kilns, where everything was burnt were the earliest form of kiln.
These were replaced by the more permanent but very inefficient updraught kilns, which were in turn replaced by the
technically superior downdraught kilns. Both of these were known as intermittent kilns because they had to be cooled
between firings to allow the bricks to be removed. Hoffman patented his continuous kiln in 1858, which had a number of
independent chambers which allowed a continuous process of loading, firing , cooling and unloading. A flare kiln is a
kiln where fuel is not mixed with the material to be fired, but is burned below it.