Station: [1] Shale and a Cosy Stove

M: Slate roofs?

F: Commonly found.

M: Slate facades?

F: Also familiar.

M: But building stone made from shale?

F: In the early 20th century, a shale processing company was established in Mögglingen. The firm built a forty metre long factory hall with incinerators, drying racks, rolling mill, et cetera. That's 130 feet, in case you were wondering. Take a look at the exposed masonry to see the result of that undertaking.

M: The building material was what's known as Posidonia shale. It's found locally in the northern foothills of the Swabian Alb as well as elsewhere. Another name for it is oil shale.

F: And now it's all about to get a bit geological! Because the term oil shale is doubly misleading.

M: For one thing, it's not really shale at all. It's a sedimentary rock made up of carbonate minerals and clay, what's known as marl.

F: Secondly, the rock doesn't contain oil in the strict sense, but a substance called kerogen, which is the raw material from which crude oil is derived. Kerogen was formed some 180 million years ago from dead algae, bacteria and plankton. In short: kerogen is of interest because it burns!

M: That was what the Mögglingen shale processing company did: it crushed and pressed the oil shale – and extracted the kerogen, which was used as fuel for the machinery in the factory, for example the drying plant. The crushed and pressed rock was subsequently processed into building blocks. However, the venture wasn't very profitable, and the factory closed in 1922.

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F: Let's stay with the subject of heat and burning for a moment. In the parlour next door, you'll find a feature that takes pride of place in the house: a large cast-iron stove. It came from a local farm called Sixenhof and was a wedding present for the young farming couple Wilhelm and Pauline Bäuerle in 1908. The stove was delivered in 28 parts, and it took many sleepless nights and a great deal of fiddling to put it back together.

M: It had been manufactured at the ironworks in Wasseralfingen, which was the Kingdom of Württemberg's main foundry at the time. That's presumably why a large royal coat of arms is emblazoned on the stove. If you look very closely, you can even decipher the motto of Württemberg's monarch: Furchtlos und treu. Fearless and loyal.