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There were once dozens of coal mines and brick works around Kingswinford,
Staffordshire in the English Midlands.
Between the end of the Stourbridge
Extension Canal and the Kingswinford branch of the Great Western Railway, Oak
Farm Brickworks was started by John Walker in 1849 to make firebricks from local
clay. |
It was then taken over by the Mobberleys, and has been run by four
generations of that family until the present day.
The works has changed little since it opened. An early grinding pan,
tempering tub and pugmill feeds clay to a manual wire-cut machine. This produces
finished bricks or "clods" of clay which are taken by barrow to be
moulded in an old hand lever press, or by hand in wooden moulds. The long
tradition of women hand-moulders still continues. Tunnel dryers are manually
loaded with racks running on narrow-gauge rails. |
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Some "beehive" down-draught kilns are still in use, but are now
fired by oil, rather than coal. Clay is imported from Amblecote, Dawley and
Scotland, and mixed with burnt fireclay to improve the refractory properties.
Oak Farm is able to produce specialist firebricks in small or medium quantities,
for example welding tables and "spanner" bricks for the fireboxes of steam
locomotives of the Severn Valley Railway. |
| The video production Hand Made Bricks,
scripted and narrated by former brick maker John Cooksey shows Oak Farm at work,
following the process from raw clay to finished bricks. It was recorded in 1982,
and was I.A.Recordings second industrial archaeology project. The recording includes
bricks being hand-moulded by women, one of whom, still working at the age of 68
had started as a girl loading railway wagons. NGR: SO 897 905 |
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The images on this
page are taken from the video. |
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