| Charles Burley's Dolphin Brand. |
Location:
- Grid reference: TQ91206442
- x=591200
- y=164420
- 51°20'47"N; 0°44'44"E
- Civil Parish: Sittingbourne, Kent
Clinker manufacture operational: 1857-1890: 1895-1925
Approximate total clinker production: 140,000 tonnes
Raw materials:
- Originally Upper Chalk of unknown origin, probably commercial supplies from the Gillingham area or from the Medway Valley. From 1920, Seaford Chalk pumped as slurry from quarry at 58882B,16321, Borden parish
- Swale Alluvial Clay from the Swale and from Elmley (59280,16720).
Ownership:
- 1825-1857? Samuel & John Cleaver
- 1857?-1883 Cleaver & Watson
- 1883-1890 Cleaver & Mist's Cement Works Co. Ltd.
- 1895-9/1924 C. Burley Ltd.
Also known as Cleaver & Mist's and Bayford Works. This was an early Roman Cement producing site, commencing around 1825 with dredged septaria from the Swale. Portland cement manufacture began with one kiln around 1857. A second kiln for Portland was started in the late 1860s. The plant had wet process bottle kilns and after its closure in 1890, it was described as having 7½ acres of land with 310 ft of wharfage and a capacity of 4500 tpa (not necessarily PC). It had a mill of two floors 46 × 20 ft, cement stores, engine and boiler houses, two drying flats, two chimney shafts, smith's and carpenter's shops, office, manager's house and two cottages, and was equipped with six kilns (not all PC), washmill, elevators, slurry pumps, four wash backs, a well pump, edge-runner mills, sifting machines, two horizontal engines, three Cornish boilers and a water wheel. It found no buyers until acquired by C Burley Ltd in 1895.
The Burley family were primarily involved in brick-making and farming, and used the cement plant as a minor adjunct in a way similar to Smeed & Dean; the plant was probably never required to make a profit. By 1907, four medium sized bottle kilns were making 80 t/week, according to Davis. The plant may have shut down before the end of WWI and the plant was substantially rebuilt with a set of six chamber kilns. A chalk quarry with washmill was opened at Borden, pumping slurry to the plant (2 km). The plant used mainly water transport throughout its life, rail despatches going by road to Sittingbourne station. The plant was extended with an extra kiln in 1938, but petered out late in WWII, probably closing around 1944, although no notice of this has come to light. Aerial photography of May 1946 shows it mostly demolished. It remained for many years in a ruinous state. It was finally redeveloped in the 1990s. The site is now occupied by a concrete products plant.
Power supply
The early plant had two horizontal steam engines. These were discarded in 1934; the replacement might have been a turbogenerator.
Rawmills
There was one washmill on the quay in the original plant. From 1920 two washmills were installed for washing clay into chalk slurry received from Borden.
No rotary kilns were installed.
Sources: