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Brickmaking in Bedfordshire |
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Ever since the time the Romans ruled in Britain, clay has been used to make bricks. Before the advent of mechanization, brickmaking was a seasonal job, mainly undertaken in the spring and summer months. In the winter months, clay diggers worked by hand with narrow bladed spades to collect clay ready to be used in the summer months.
Brickmaking was a very slow process until the 1930s, when the drag line – a giant machine, which scooped large quantities of clay and delivered it via a conveyor belt to the factory - was introduced. 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 at 1,000 degrees Centigrade in a Hoffmann kiln. The unique fuel content of the clay in Bedfordshire resulted in bricks which were very cheap to produce.
Listen to a former brickworks “burner” talk about how bricks were fired “by eye” before the introduction of computers. Listen here
Modern brickmaking in Bedfordshire started when the London Brick Company bought up various small local companies, such as Randall and B J H Forders & Co, to create the largest brickworks in the world. London Brick employed over 2,000 people and manufactured over 500 million bricks per year. By the 1930s, there were 135 chimneys in the Marston Vale.
After World War II, there was an enormous demand for bricks to help in the reconstruction of Britain’s housing stock. Bedfordshire had the clay but not the people to make the bricks, since returning soldiers were reluctant to take up such arduous labour. The brick companies looked overseas for workers, and found many willing recruits, firstly among people displaced from Eastern Europe, and then among Italians in the 1950s, and later Indians, Pakistanis and West Indians.
Listen to how an Indian immigrant worker and translator for London Brick Company remembers the multicultural aspects of work in the '60s. Listen here
A modernisation programme from the 1950s onwards contributed to more efficient brick production. However, the later 1960s brought a decline in the demand for bricks, and consequently a need to diversify. London Brick Land Fill began the controlled tipping of household and industrial waste into the old clay pits.
Listen to a former brickworks transport manager, and later Managing Director, discuss how changes in the market led to a more aggressive sales policy in the 1970s and ‘80s.Listen here
In the 1970s, London Brick Company acquired rival companies including Marston Valley Brick Company, Redland Brick Ltd and others. But the decline in demand forced the first set of redundancies in 1974. Some works were closed and the rest were further modernised. The closure of Ridgmont pit in 1983 enabled the company to stay in profit, with the redundancy of 1,100 workers, however, the company was then taken over by Hanson, causing yet more workers to lose their jobs. Now there are just 230 people employed at the Stewartby brickworks, and only 2 kilns and 3 chimneys in use, producing a total of 135 millions bricks a year.
Listen to the last works’ nurse at the Stewartby brickworks reflect on her work in a male environment, as she prepares to retire. Listen here
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Acknowledgements: All the recorded material in this article has been provided by the "Changing Landscapes Changing Lives" Oral History Archive at Forest of Marston Vale, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Many thanks for all their help.
Words: Carmela Semeraro
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