The limeworks at Merstham started on an industrial scale in about 1807 and were operated by Jolliffe and Banks the famous civil engineering partnership. Later in the 19th century the Hall family of Hall and Co fame took over the works, and subsequently the Peters family. The limeworks were more or less defunct by the late 1940s and were landfilled in around 1970. The M23 now lies over the site of the kilns. The pits were the site of a series of tests by Alfred Nobel of the new "dynamite" in the 1860s.