…thanks to Dan of No Facilities for hosting Thursday Doors, https://nofacilities.com/2021/02/04/author-author-thursday-doors/

On Wednesday my husband and I got in the car and headed north west to Halton Hills and the Limestone Conservation Area. The conservation area is an extension of the Niagara Escarpment and three trails run through it. One of the trails is the Bruce Trail. The highlight for us were the Lime Kilns that once produced limestone blocks in the 1800s and ceased production in 1917.

This time of year the trails are not maintained and can be somewhat treacherous because of the ice. This was especially true near the stone arch bridge. A new bridge has been built parallel to it but the steps were very icy and it took me quite some time to safely navigate this slippery slope. I thought that the barrel style structures were a different style of kiln but after doing some research I discovered that these building were the powder houses where the explosives, used to blast out the limestone, were stored. Black Creek is the waterway that surges under the bridge and with the snow and ice I found the setting very picturesque.

In the town of Limehouse sits an old church which is now the Limehouse Memorial Centre. Limehouse was first settled in 1820. By the 1840’s limestone quarrying and “burning” of limestone in kilns to make lime, had begun. The Grand Trunk Railway built its line through Limehouse in 1856 which required 200 workers and their families to settle in the area.(from Wikipedia)

Today about 800 people live in Limehouse. There are several farms in the area where racing horses and wild boar are raised.