The Beehive Brick Kiln (Historical Marker)

Here follows the inscription written on this trailside historical marker:

The Beehive Brick Kiln
From the turn of the century until the late 1960’s nine kilns on this site were operated by inmates of the Lorton correctional facility.

The bricks stacked inside this kiln are ready to be baked. For 4 to 5 days coal fires in each of the hearths were stoked around the clock. Hot air rose along the inside of the vaulted walls but did not escape through the hole in the ceiling. Heat was sucked down through the bricks, between louvers in the floor, across an underground flue, and up the tall chimney which stands beside the kiln.

These kilns were a primary local source of the red brick used in constructing the historic durable buildings now seen throughout northern Virginia. Today beehive kilns are little used.

Erected by Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority.


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Regarding The Beehive Brick Kiln:

Inside the fireholes were baffles or ‘bag’ of firebricks. It had a domed roof and a perforated floor under which ran a flue leading to the chimney stack. The circular or ‘beehive’ kiln had a capacity of about 12,000 green bricks. Coal was lit inside the firehole grates and hot gases were directed upward from the baffles and then downwards from the underside of the dome and through the stacked bricks by the draught from the chimney.

Altogether it took fourteen days or so to operate, with two days for loading or setting, three days for ‘curing,’ two days for heating to full temperature, one day at full heat, then another three or four days to cool down and a further day to unload or draw.

This information and the illustration in Picture 6 were obtained from an article on Brickmaking History, on the Isle of Wight Industrial Archaeology Society Website: http://www.iwias.org.uk/