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THE LONDON BRICK COMPANY

Brickmakers in Bedford and Peterborough

Throughout the twentieth century, tall chimneys, kilns and clay pits have dominated the Bedfordshire countryside leaving us in no doubt that brick and tile manufacturing was an important industry in the county. Many of us will have ancestors who worked in small rural independent brickyards and who appeared on the census and other records as brickworkers, moulders, chowders, brickmakers etc. The occupation was common in rural areas and in many families brickmaking was a generational trade, passed down from father to son.

History of brickmaking.

Basic brickmaking processes have remained unchanged for centuries. The Romans introduced brickmaking to the country although their bricks were a slightly different shape from those of today; theirs were basically sun-dried mud and later kiln-dried.

After the end of the Roman occupation, brickmaking temporarily disappeared. It was the tile industry which first reappeared in medieval times with brick manufacture reintroduced in the Middle Ages, primarily because timber, commonly used for building at the time, became a rare commodity. In Bedfordshire the first record of bricks was not in any documentary form but was seen in a building dating to the mid-1400s and which still stands today close to Luton Airport. From this date onward, using bricks in building churches and country houses became very common. In 1579 Richard Hye leased land in Heath and Reach and he was granted a licence to dig clay to make bricks and tiles.

Originally all bricks were hand-moulded but machine methods were introduced in the later part of the nineteenth century and it is these processes that many of our ancestors would have been involved with as brickmakers. The prime ingredient of bricks was clay; Oxford Clay was the most important for the manufacturing process giving rise to many brickworks in the Bedford and Peterborough areas.

Brickyards

Many early operators of brickyards were local farmers and estate owners. In the 1851 Kelly’s directory for Bedfordshire, several of the brickmakers listed were also farmers. It was not unusual for the labourers in brickyards to work on a seasonal basis finding work as agricultural labourers during the rest of the year. The actual numbers required to operate brickyards was fairly minimal.

In some areas bricks were fired on the building site by itinerant brickmakers. This process declined with the establishment of permanent brickyards because the itinerants found regular employment in the yards.

Three different types of brickyards evolved - the commercial yard, the estate yard and the parish yard. Many brickyard owners leased their land and were paid a royalty on the number of bricks produced. They sold them via agents to the public and bricklayers. Landowners became rich from the fees as the number of bricks sold increased. Huge numbers of bricks were needed for construction of railway cuttings and bridges as well as docks and the large buildings of the Victorian era. Thousands of bricklayers working in gangs were also needed.

Many landowners also wanted a more hands-on involvement and so established brickyards for their own use; it was not unusual to find small kilns on estates or farms. One of the advantages of a landowner making his own bricks was that not only could he sell to the public, he could also bring in extra labour from his estate at busy times providing useful employment for his tenants.

Commercial and estate brickyards.

The commercial and estate brickyards were not averse to employing children as they were cheap labour; some were as young as eight years old. They often worked twelve hours a day for six days a week, and in all weathers. Many suffered from respiratory infections caused by the dust but they were expected to continue whatever the weather. Children did all sorts of jobs in the yard from carrying clays to the brickmakers to emptying the kilns when the bricks had been fired. Most brickyard workers worked in self-sustaining gangs of six including the brick moulder, the crowder and others who worked the whole process from start to finish.

Parish brickyards

As a rule brickyards were not in public ownership but in some areas, parishes owned and operated brickyards, the income of which was used by the overseers to supplement the poor rate. It was not unusual by the middle of the eighteenth century for parishes to have at least one brickyard. Most parishes that had a brickyard employed a person to manage it. As such, they controlled the workmen, erected buildings necessary for the manufacturing and supervised the whole brickmaking process. The manager was also responsible for handling the income and expenditure, very often taking his wages as a percentage of the income from sales.

A brickmaker’s working day

Brickmaking was hard work in a harsh environment and usually seasonal. Clay was dug in the winter months, usually by hand, and then put into piles; chalk, cinders and other slag was then mixed in with the clay and left to “mature”. Brickmaking began in the spring where the clay was taken to the moulder who would shape it into bricks and would be expected to mould about a 1000 bricks a day. Most brickmakers worked for about eight hours every day and on average they worked a fifty-eight-hour week.

Once moulded the bricks were transferred to drying racks; when dry, the bricks were taken to the kiln by crowders on barrows with a total weight of about 400 pounds. Once they were fired and left to cool, they were then transported by railway, road or barge. A loader was expected to move between 40,000 and 50,000 bricks in a day.

By the early twentieth century this process was mechanised; in 1938 there were still about 60,000 people employed in the brickyards, but by 1958 it was about half that.

The London Brick Company

The London Brick Company dominated mass brick manufacture for most of the twentieth century. Their works were based mainly around the Bedford and Peterborough areas, which were rich in Oxford Clay thus providing the raw material for manufacture on the spot. Bedfordshire was the main base for both production and administration.

The company was founded in 1889 in Fletton, a village near Peterborough, and it acquired swathes of land in Bedfordshire that were rich in Oxford Clay from the Marston Vale area.

At the time there were many smaller brickyards in the county. The London Brick Company started expanding; they acquired the Wootton operation of James Randall in 1900 and 450 acres of land at Wootton Pillinge in 1905.

Forders, a small operation at Westoning, produced bricks from gault clay and in 1897 opened brickworks at Elstow. In 1900, Halley Stewart acquired Forders and already had associates in the Peterborough area including Kebles whose partnership was later dissolved due to various disagreements about production processes and division of profits. The Westoning brickworks closed in 1906 to concentrate production of bricks from Oxford Clay at Elstow, and from 1920 on the land acquired at Wootton Pillinge.

Between 1900 and 1930 the number of brickworks nationally declined by two-thirds, but Fletton bricks superseded other stock bricks and the Bedfordshire works prospered.

Marston Vale brickworks

At its height, Stewartby was the largest brickworks in the world employing over 2,000 people, many of whom were displaced Eastern Europeans, Italians, Polish and later West Indians.

Stewartby village

Residential Stewartby was a model village originally built in 1926 to house the local workers of the London Brick Company. The village was designed and built on the ‘Garden City’ principle and was took the name of Stewartby after the Stewart family, many of whom were directors of London Brick Company.

Brickmaking was a very slow process until the 1930s when the company acquired the giant dragline, a machine which scooped up large quantities of clay from the pits and delivered it via a conveyor belt to the brickworks.

In the factory the clay was put into a grinding pan, then passed through a heated piano wire screen, ready to be pressed into bricks and fired in a Hoffmann kiln which mass-produced bricks economically. Stewartby was integral to modern brickmaking in the Marston Vale area.

When the Fletton brick industry was in its infancy in the mid-1800s, open clamp kilns were used to fire the bricks which proved inefficient and caused pollution. Brickmakers were very unpopular, so much so that an injunction in 1881 resulted in a change over to the first Hoffman kilns at the Fletton works near Peterborough.

The modern Hoffman kiln process used at Stewartby and Elstow required a large kiln built with a series of chambers. Flues built within the kiln and controlled by the huge chimney stack on top allowed the fire to move gradually around the chambers which produced the most efficient use of the heat to dry then fire and ultimately cool the bricks. Each chamber held 64000 raw bricks. They were carefully stacked allowing for the curve of the kiln roof and making efficient use of the space. Once loaded, the bricks are sealed into the chamber with a screen of old bricks and sealant of brick dust, plaster and cement known locally as a wicket.

The fire in the kiln was controlled by the flues gradually reaching all the loaded dried bricks. Once the temperature reached approximately 400 degrees centigrade, the bricks ignite and fire themselves. When the combustible elements within the bricks were burnt off, a small amount of coal was added to keep the bricks at the correct temperature. When the bricks were fired correctly, the fire was moved to the next chamber. When the chamber had cooled the wicket was broken open allowing fresh air to complete the brickmaking process.

This method of production allowed for continuous manufacture. The kiln at Stewartby was lit in 1964 and had never been out of production until closure of the works in 2008.

This basic technology was first devised in 1858 showing that brick production was rudimentary. In summary, modern brick manufacture followed this process...

- Clay was cut by mechanical drag

- Placed in a crushing machine at the clay pit

- Crushed clay was loaded onto a conveyer belt for its journey to works

- Clay was further crushed to remove impurities

- Clay was mixed and tested to ensure uniformity of product

- Common Flettons were left plain but patterned bricks were dampened and had a special finish added

- Clay was placed in brickmoulds and double pressed

- Bricks moved along a conveyor to then be stacked by hand

- Brick stacks were taken to kiln

- Bricks were allowed to dry then sealed into kiln for start of an eleven-day firing cycle

- Fired bricks were removed to stacking sheds

- Bricks were quality-checked ready for sale.

Stewartby brickworks closed in 2021 when the last four tall chimneys were demolished. In context, at the height of production, Stewartby had 167 chimneys.

Brick production continues today in the UK, primarily in Leicestershire but there are still a few small brickworks making handmade bricks.

Italian brickmakers in Bedfordshire

Italy was in virtual ruins after the Second World War and its southern regions were particularly affected by overpopulation and underdevelopment. England was rebuilding with an infrastructure programme that needed young men. After 1951 there was a general immigration of Italians into Bedford with most employed by the London Brick Company who launched recruitment schemes to entice southern Italian workers to come to Bedford.

The post-war building boom had created a shortage of labour in the Bedfordshire brickworks industry and some 7,500 men from southern Italy travelled to Bedford in the 1950s. As time went by, some workers left the brick factory and began to set up their own businesses such as hairdressing salons, restaurants and bars.

Both the Italians and Bedfordians were apprehensive of the scheme which was not without controversy and some discrimination but the managers of the brickworks knew just what they were doing and why.

When the Italians first arrived in the county, they were placed in hostels, some of which were former POW camps. When they could afford, it they moved into the area which became known as 'Little Italy'. The workers were engaged for a period of four years and were permitted to send for their families if they obtained an employer's certificate of satisfactory conduct and a certificate from a landlord wiling to accommodate the family. After the period of four years had expired, the workers were at liberty to stay on at the brickworks seek employment elsewhere or return to Italy.

Records of brickmakers

The use of basic records such as census returns, parish registers and certificates is the first step to locating an ancestor who was a brickworker. Very few other official records survive.

The records of the private estate brickyards can be found amongst the general estate records. Where they survive, they will usually have been deposited in local record offices. Information on wages paid, names of men employed, production figures and accounts for the brickyards could be found. Many of the workers were estate employees and tenants anyway so searching generally will provide information about an individual.

Parish brickyard records are likely to be incorporated in the overseers' accounts but there may be separate ledgers relating to brickyard activity. The vestry minutes may also provide information on those appointed as supervisors. It will be necessary to search thoroughly as such records may not always be obvious.

Most records for the commercial companies do not exist before the twentieth century. However, in some cases earlier established companies have deposited their records but the content can vary considerably. It is sometimes possible to find details of the men, women and children who worked in the brickyards from such a source. Most again are within county record offices.

This article was contributed by Ian Waller from Family History Federation.

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