Slurry Tank: Mason's Cement Works, Great Blakenham
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Slurry Tank: Mason's Cement Works, Great Blakenham by Dylan Moore as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk

Image: © Dylan Moore Taken: 14 Sep 1996
This plant used the "wet process" in which the raw materials were ground together with water to produce a slurry with approximately the consistency of paint. The slurry was then fed to the kiln which successively dried, calcined and sintered it at 1400°C to form Portland cement clinker. The raw materials here were Upper Chalk and Boulder Clay from quarries in Image The slurry contained around 32% of water by mass: this had to be evaporated, at significant energy-cost. Because of this, wet process plants have been progressively phased out over the last thirty years. There are currently (2008) only three wet-process cement kilns left in operation in the British Isles. For more details, see http://www.cementkilns.co.uk/cement_kiln_masons.html. 2009 Update: there are now no wet process kilns left: the last one (Westbury Kiln 2 Image) shut down in 2009.