The lehr needed to be rebuilt for two reasons: firstly, we needed a larger lehr; secondly, the end walls were becoming unstable and needed to be repaired. The aim was to add another ten inches in length, but keep the width and height unaltered.

It was carefully dismantled and the hearth was eventually completely removed in advance of a new hearth. We planned to re-use part of the old hearth as it still appeared to be sound, but it had, in fact, deteriorated badly due to the large amount of thermal shock it had undergone (this can be seen in the last four photos).