Category: In Search Of Something

Saturday 9th November 2013

James Palmer writes ~

Dear Danny Howell,
I found your website whilst researching for my dissertation on brickwork and craft at Oxford School of Architecture, Oxford Brookes University. I am from Crockerton and used to work at Lakeside Garden Centre, whilst there I remember Steve Cripps mentioning that the lake used to be an old clay pit and decided to look into this whilst working on my dissertation. That lead me to this post on your website http://www.dannyhowell.net/1990/11/crockerton-on-airwaves.html.

I am interested in learning more about the history of brick making in Crockerton and the reasons for the Brick and Tile Works’ closure, however the only other source I could find for such information was one paragraph on Wiltshire Council’s website. I was wondering if you knew anything else about the subject or would be able to suggest where I may be able to find this information?
Many thanks, James Palmer.

Danny Howell replies ~

Thank you James for your enquiry. You are quite correct about the ornamental lake at the Lakeside Garden Centre, Crockerton, being formed out of an old clay pit that serviced the Crockerton Brickyard. The history of making things out of clay goes back a long way in the village – hence its name “Crockerton” and the derivation of local place names there such as “Clay Street” and “Potters Hill”. The Crockerton Brick and Tile Company closed in 1954, after a period “suffering severe competition from Bedfordshire bricks”. 

Fortunately, I can provide you with the information you are seeking, and include here some notes of interest from three different sources.

Firstly, Bruce Watkin, who lived in Crockerton for many years, did some considerable local history research. Among his published work is the chapter on ‘Industry In The Deverills’ which he contributed to the book ‘The Deverill Valley‘, first published by the Deverill Valley History Group in December 1982. In that chapter he relates pottery making, brick and tile making, milling, cloth making, and silk spinning. The pottery trade, he notes, was in evidence as far back at the 13th century. You can get a lending copy of The Deverill Valley book at Warminster Library, so I won’t repeat the whole chapter, but here are the relevant notes by Bruce about brick production at Crockerton:

“It is clear that by the 19th Century the ancient industry was in decline. Colt Hoare refers only to the production of coarse earthenware, and the Tithe Assessment Survey of 1839 identifies but two potters, one in the garden of Well House, then owned by William Butcher who was by then making bricks at Polebridge, and the other on a nearby plot of land occupied by Thomas and Henry Butcher. None are listed in any later census, so the long tradition was obviously and finally broken.”

“There was, however, one later link through the brickworks at Polebridge, for a Glastonbury potter worked there in a disused tile shed from 1946 to 1949 and his work is still [1982] continued by Maurice Hankey (son of the last brickworks owner) at the Bell Pottery in Warminster. Quite independently of this, another potter, A. W. Gould, started work in the craft centre at Bull Mill in 1973.”

“As has been noted, two of the 18th century potting families, the Millards and the Butchers, moved sideways from potting to brickmaking probably in the early 19th century. Neither attracted the attention of the Land Tax Assessors (1780 to 1832) but the Tithe Assessment surveyors record their two brickyards. The upper was Thomas Millard’s three-acre field called ‘Barter’s Orchard and Dry Piece’, a short way west of Broadmead Lane on the north side of the valley. It was never extensive and the excavation is almost unnoticeable today.”

“The lower brickyard was on a site of twenty-two acres east of the Shaftesbury road which was listed as ‘closes and brickyard near Bull Mill’ owned by William Butcher, although the use is described as ‘pasture’. William was a man of many parts, for in 1841 he was the publican of the ‘Bath Arms’, in 1851 he was an ‘innkeeper and brickmaker’, while in 1861 he was listed as being a farmer on 200 acres (where he employed sixteen men and four boys), and also a brickmaker. In 1868, by which time he was over seventy, he finally sold his farm and went to live at Polebridge Cottage, adjoining his brickyard.”

“William’s son, Robert, succeeded to the yard, but when his lease expired his new interest in a firm of builders in Warminster was clearly more attractive, and a new lease was acquired by Francis George Harris who worked it until after the First World War, when his widow and his son George took over the business under the title of Mrs Fanny Harris & Co.,  brickmaker. Employment in the yard seems to have been small. William Butcher had only two clay-diggers in 1851, and Robert in 1871 had five brickyard labourers (unspecified) although in 1871 some were described as brick or tile moulders.”

“Herbert Hankey, manager of the Warminster branch of coal merchants Birds and Bryer Ash, acquired the works in 1926 and incorporated them as Warminster Brick and Tile Co. In 1932 this was absorbed in a larger company, the Wiltshire Brick Co., formed with the Yorkshire Brick Co. of Doncaster, to acquire the Crockerton and two Chippenham works in order to increase the Yorkshire company’s production in southern England. They acquired a variation in the lease from the Longleat Estate to allow for a further forty-four years’ working from 22nd June 1932.”

 Advertisement for the Warminster Brick And Tile Company, at Crockerton, 1931.

“By the end of the 19th century there was a shallow two acre pit under the site of the present [1982] ‘Crockerton Warehouse’, with a long range of sheds to its west, and newer kilns on the site of the present garden centre’s glasshouse. By the end of Harris’s tenure, sheds had been extended over the old pit and three new acres to the east had been excavated to a greater depth; Hankey extended the pit further east and north, but never employed many men at one time. The second World War undid much of Hankey’s endeavours, for the Chippenham works had to close for lack of labour, and the Crockerton works were only reprieved after Dunkirk when the army released former brickmakers to produce new bricks for new barracks at Longbridge and around Salisbury Plain. The permanent buildings were not much altered, but the pit was extended and deepened to north and east. Middlebrook (in Warminster Journal, 1950) describes the scene not long after the war and says ‘the pit had three foot of sandy soil, then a deep pit of blue and grey clay well below river level’, while the works had small gauge railways, a mechanical excavator, and a ‘ramshackle collection of brick and timber buildings dominated by a squat chimney’. The outside observer, particularly looking at it from the Polebridge side, would probably have been surveying a scene which had changed very little in the previous fifty years.”

“The works were by then employing between twenty and thirty men and producing in a good year some two million bricks. Royalties were £75 per annum and one shilling per thousand bricks made. There was also a small royalty paid on a sand pit west of Crockerton Church (now [1982] ‘Badgers Holt’), which was associated with the brickworks, but this was little used as there is a fair proportion of sand in the local clay. A wide variety of bricks and tiles were made, together with tile-drains for the War Agricultural Committee which was one of the biggest customers. The Company was able to acquire the freehold of the works and sandpit for £3,500 in the [Longleat Estate] sale of 1947, but it was already suffering severe competition from Bedfordshire bricks whose clay has the built-in advantage of 10% carbonaceous matter. The works staggered on, but finally closed in 1954 when the site was sold to G. Nicholas, to be used first as a milk depot and then as a super-market and garden centre. The brick buildings disappeared beneath newer sheds and a car park, after the clay pit was moulded to make the present ornamental lake. The long history of Crockerton crocks was over.”

Details for the Crockerton Brickyard in the Longleat Sale Catalogue of 1947. The property sold by auction for £3,500.

Danny Howell adds ~

Middlebrook quoted in the above article, was Wilfred Middlebrook. In November 1949 he began a serial called ‘The Wylye Valley’ in the Warminster Journal, in which he portrayed a semi-imaginary journey through the valley, with himself as ‘Bernard Gullible’ and a companion he called ‘John Pertwood’. Gullible and Pertwood visited Crockerton en route and this is what they saw and said about the Crockerton brick works:

After a brief rest and a smoke, while the hot sun quickly removed the damp feeling from Gullible’s sock, they made their way to the corner of the field and the Wylye bank. Under cover of a perfect nest of trees, completely invisible from the opposite bank as Pertwood had said, the Shearwater stream emptied itself quietly and unobstrusively into the Wylye. At this point there was only a few feet between the river and a wire fence, and Gullible was astonished to find beyond the fence a deep and huge clay pit or quarry. Pertwood viewed his astonishment with obvious enjoyment.

Invisible from any point but the immediate vicinity of the fence, this clay pit, which had obviously been worked for centuries, was a surprise indeed. A short top section of sandy soil, no more than three feet deep below the turf, then solid blue and grey clay and flint dropping sheer to the depths below, where a network of small-gauge railway lines, a collection of tiny trucks with a long hauling ramp that raised them to the opposite summit of the pit, a couple of wooden huts and a mechanical excavator that bit deeply into the clay as though anxious to take time by the forelock and make a bigger hole in less time than heretobefore; the whole so far below the river level, indeed, that the railway lines and the trucks looked like a child’s playthings in a miniature sandpit. On the far side, where the railway ramp topped the chasm, a ramshackle collection of brick and timber buildings, dominated by a squat chimney stack, revealed itself as the factory that was fed from this gaping pit beneath.

“This must be Crockerton brick works,’ exclaimed Mr. Gullible, when he had absorbed the unusual scene before him. “I’ve seen it from the road of course, but never realised they had a clay pit as big as this. It must have been worked for hundreds of years to make a hole this size.”

Danny Howell notes ~

Wilfred Middlebrook went on to say that the Brick And Tile Company, at that time, 1949, were also making pottery, having re-introduced the pottery making trade in recent times, and that “some fine work comes from the kilns.”

Danny Howell adds ~

On 31st July 1998 I made a tape-recorded interview with George Blagdon (born 21st November 1914). George grew up at Crockerton. After leaving  school he worked for Norman White at White’s forge at Weymouth Street, Warminster, but between 1934 and 1949 George worked at the Crockerton Brickyard. I included the transcript of the conversation George spoke to me, in one of my books, Wylye Valley Folk, Volume One (published by Bedeguar Books in July 1999). The book is now out of print but Warminster Library have a lending copy. And George’s recollections, from the book, are online on my blog, click here. The following notes, from the book, are what George had to say about his time at the Crockerton brick works:

“I worked at White’s for about five years. I got a wage rise of a shilling every year. The first year I was there I got eight shillings. By the fifth year I was getting thirteen shillings. My mates were working at the Crockerton Brickyard. They were getting more than me, so I asked Mr White for a rise. He said ‘No, I’m sorry I can’t afford to pay you any more. If you want more money you’ll have to get another job.’ I said ‘Fair enough. I’ll look for another job.’ He said ‘Yes, you better do that.’

“On the way home that night I called in at the brickyard at Crockerton and saw the foreman Jimmy Pinchen. I said ‘Any chance of a job?’ In those days the brickyard was a seasonal occupation. They used to shut down in the winter and open up again in the spring. They used to dry the bricks in the open and they couldn’t dry the bricks in the winter. Jimmy said ‘We are sure to put some staff on when we start up again. How can I let you know?’ I said ‘Let Percy Bundy know.’ Percy worked at the brickyard and lived next door to us. I said ‘Let him know and I’ll come and see you again.’

“About a week after, Percy came and saw me. He said ‘Will you come and see Jimmy in the morning? He’s got a job for you.’ I said ‘Right, I will.’ I went and saw Jimmy. He said ‘When can you start?’ I said ‘I shall have to give White’s, where I’m working now, a week’s notice.’ I told Mr White. I said ‘I’ve come to give my notice in.’ He said ‘What?’ I said ‘I’ve come to give my notice in.’ He said ‘What’s up then?’ I said ‘I’ve done what you told me to do. I’ve got another job.’ He said ‘How am I going to manage then?’ I said ‘That’s too bad, you’ll have to manage without me.’ He said ‘What are they going to pay you?’ I said ‘I’m not worried about how much exactly they’re going to pay me. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s more a year than you pay.’ He said ‘I’ll have to get someone else in then to work for me.’ He got Bill Stokes after me. Bill lived at Chapel Street but I think he got killed in the Second World War [William Stokes died on 12th February 1944].”

“The job I got at the Crockerton Brickyard was temporary to begin with. As I said just now, brickmaking at Crockerton was only seasonal, from April to October because they dried the bricks outdoors. They told me they would be having a new kiln built the following year and then they would be making bricks all the year round. They were going to have a drying shed built, with boilers. I was happy to start temporary. I was happy to have any job to survive. I started in April and worked until October. They couldn’t make bricks after that because of the frosty weather. It had to stop then. I got laid off and I was without work for about a month.”

“I had to sign on the dole. The Labour Exchange was in the Market Place. It was where the estate agents [Taylor’s] are now [closed December 1998], next to where the traffic lights are. There were a couple of rooms there. The Council Offices were there as well. There were quite a few men on the dole. There wasn’t much work about in those days. The farmers were getting rid of their horses and going mechanised with tractors. A lot of men, like the carters, got pushed off the farms. A farmer would get a tractor driver who would do the work of three or four men.”

“I signed on three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I got a few shillings a week, about ten, when I was on the dole. It was paid to me at the Labour Exchange. Mr Pullin was in charge and he would send people out looking for work. If they found a job for you they would send you off to it. They had nothing for me. I didn’t get sent anywhere. I wasn’t worried about not getting a job because I knew the brickyard at Crockerton would start up again the following spring.”

“I was coming home from Warminster one day and the manager of the Crockerton Brickyard, Mr [Herbert] Hankey, stopped me. He said ‘Mr Blagdon, could you do a job for me?’ I said ‘I could.’ He said ‘I’ve got a job which would suit you temporary.’ As well as running the Brickyard he also used to run the Birds & Bryer Ash coal yard at Station Road. He wanted help with the coal in the winter. He said ‘If you help there, I’ll promise you a job when the brickyard starts up next year and that will be permanent.’ He promised me that.”

. . . . “I got on very well with Mr Hankey. I used to have the odd argument with him now and then but on the whole we got on alright. He always treated me with respect and he kept his word about getting me a job at Crockerton Brickyard when it re-opened in the spring. Once the Brickyard had its new kiln Mr Hankey finished with Birds & Bryer Ash. He gave the coal business up.”

“I started at the Brickyard the following April. The new kiln had been installed. It was a big continuous one and they made bricks all the year round from then on. They fired bricks in one chamber before moving on to the next chamber. It had 20 chambers. When they got to the twentieth they started again in the first one. They made millions of bricks. The clay was dug out of a pit. There were three or four chaps digging out clay all the time. I can remember Herbie Dyer, Bill Maslen, and Cecil Ladd doing that. They were from Deverill and Sutton Veny. The clay was put into skips. The skips were wheeled on rails out of the pit to the turntable. The pit was 16 to 20 feet deep and the skips were pushed by hand. They were then winched from the turntable, with a machine winch, to the top.”

This photograph shows workers taking a break during boiler cleaning at the Crockerton Brickyard during the 1930s. Left to right: Eddie Marsh, Cyril Lapham, Mr. Bristow, and George Blagdon.

“The clay was put through the brick-making machines. It went into hoppers where it was chopped up into little bits. Then it went through a series of rollers and was pressed down through some more rollers into a die. It came out of the end of the die in the shape of a brick. They used to come out on to a slab and ended up as so many bricks on a table. There was a hand machine with a lever which poured water over a set of bricks and then they went into the dryers to be dried. They spent ten or 12 days in the dryer and then they were ready to go in the kiln. The kiln was fired with coal. The bricks were built up in the kiln about 12 or 14 feet high. They covered the top with sand. Along the sand there was a series of holes through which the coal was poured down into the bricks. The fire was drawn up through. The bricks were in the kiln for 10 to 14 days. Then they were taken out and stacked up to cool.”

“All the bricks went out by lorry. The Brickyard had two lorries of its own and Billy White, who had a haulage business in Warminster, used to send a lot of lorries in. Builders also used to bring their lorries and collect. The bricks were loaded by hand on to lorries. Very often the bricks were still hot. The men wore rubber pads on their hands when they were loading. The pads were made out of old tyres. You didn’t hold the bricks in your hands for long when you were loading because you had to get the loads out as quick as you could. The drivers didn’t want to hang about. They couldn’t get the bricks out of the yard fast enough. I’ve seen lorries going out of the yard on fire because the bricks were so hot. The lorries would turn round and come back to the yard to get some water to put the fire out.”

Staff from the Crockerton Brickyard on a coach outing in 1938. The photo is thought to have been taken at Weymouth The coach was supplied by Cruse’s of Warminster. Among the men in the picture are George Blagdon, Di Bowen, Les Hardiman, Ralph Rogers, Charlie Waters, Sidney Waters and “Boxer” Billy White. One of the men standing in the open-top coach, on the right of the picture, is Jack Trollope.

“Before the Second World War started there were a lot of bricks in stock at Crockerton. At one point they told us they had a million and a half bricks on stand-by. When the Second World War was imminent they started to build barracks on Salisbury Plain for the soldiers. Within about two or three months every brick in that brickyard had gone.”

“During the War there were some Italian prisoners of war working at Crockerton Brickyard. They were useless. The first thing they wanted to do when they got there in the morning was go off to the banks of the river Wylye getting willows. They would bring them back and start making baskets. That’s all they wanted to do all day long. They didn’t like making bricks. They were from a prisoner of war camp at Westbury, where the West Wilts Trading Estate is now. There were about six Italian prisoners working at the Brickyard. There was no soldier to see over them. One of the Italians was put in charge of the others. They were not considered a threat. They had to look after themselves. One or two of them could speak English. They didn’t bother me. I didn’t have a lot to do with them.”

“Some German prisoners came after the Italians. Those Germans were the best workers. They were worth their weight in gold. They did a lot of work. To begin with they dug clay out by hand with spades but the boss bought an excavator. I was driving it in the clay pit one day, digging some rough stuff out. I was swinging the excavator round when an accident happened. I looked up and I saw something coming down towards me. That was a fall of clay. It smashed the excavator up. These four Germans came running across straight away and got me out. They saved me. They dug me out. I didn’t pass out but it shook me up. I broke my ankle and bruised the other one. I had a lucky escape. It could have been a lot worse. I got taken to Warminster Hospital to have my foot seen to. Dr Graham Campbell treated me. I was off work for about two months. I got some sick pay through the union. They fought the case and got me some compensation. One of the German prisoners was a blacksmith. He got the excavator repaired and mended.”

“Mr Hankey was in charge of everything. There were a couple of women in the office. In fact, they had come from Birds & Bryer Ash’s. One was called Wagstaffe and there was someone called Gray. They did the paperwork and saw to the wages. There were about 30 blokes working at the brickyard. I started off on a machine, slicing the bricks through. The foreman, Jimmy Pinchen, came to me and said ‘I’ve got a job that would suit you.’ I said ‘What’s that, Jim?’ He said ‘I want somebody to look after the boiler and tend to machinery.’ I started doing that. It was a good job. The only thing was I had to work 12 hour shifts, from six in the morning until six at night, and it was seven days a week. There were no holidays. You didn’t have holidays in them days. It was rather monotonous but you had to do it otherwise you’d lose your job. Sometimes they’d come up in the middle of the night to my house and say ‘George, the boiler fire’s gone out.’ They’d shout through the window to try and wake me up. My wife would say ‘Don’t take no notice of them.’ I used to have to go to the yard and sort things out. I only had to go across the fields to get to the Brickyard.”

“The Crockerton Brickyard was a big concern at one time. It came to an end, like a lot of places came to an end for the same reason. It started off as a small job. It was known as the Warminster Brick And Tile Company. It got took over by the Wiltshire Brick Company. Of course they had different ideas. They sacked a lot of the chaps who had been there. The new company had its own way of doing things. They could produce bricks cheaper. A lot of the bricks were made with waste ashes and clinker. I saw millions of bricks during the 15 years I worked at Crockerton Brickyard.” 

Danny Howell concludes his reply ~

I sincerely hope, James, that all of the above will give you a really good insight into the history of brick making at Crockerton. Maybe too, it will prompt readers of dannyhowell.net to let us know if they have recollections, further information and/or any photographs or documents about the Crockerton Brickyard, which we can share online, on this blog, helping swell our local history archive.  Our email address is dannyhowellnet@gmail.com