End of year news
As a registered charity the Friends raises funds so the Archives can obtain documents and equipment beyond the scope of council funding. We also led the fundraising for the For the Record transformation project. Members come from all over the world but those living locally have the opportunity to attend regular talks and to participate in visits to places of historical interest.
Clive Andrews, Chairman of FoGA says - The Friends hope to restart their programme of talks and outings as soon as government rules allow. We know how much members have missed these events. Until we can meet again we wish all our members good health, and look forward to the time when we can meet again.
Membership is open to anyone with an interest in Gloucestershire’s history and heritage. Perhaps you live in the county, your ancestors came from there, or you're just interested in the history of the county. All are welcome. For information about how to join click here
Our newsletter is published twice a year, in the winter (December) and the summer (June). There is always a fascinating and broad range of topics covered. The winter 2020 edition includes articles about -
An Embroidered Envelope with the card from inside bringing Christmas Greetings from the front during WW1.
Private collection.
Liz Jack, like all of us has been confined to home and in the December 2020 newsletter Liz wrote an article about the old bricks she found in her garden.
What did YOU do during Lockdown? - 1
During the pandemic, many of us turned to our gardens for solace and exercise. I decided it was time to get rid of an old, clogged and smelly pond at the bottom of my garden and utilise a pile of old bricks to create a paved area where I could sit and contemplate instead. With the aid of friends and relatives, the rotting plants were hauled out of the water, the rocks removed from the border and the old lining pulled up. The newts and baby frogs were encouraged to move to the other ponds as the water soaked away.
Next, some additional old bricks arrived from friends to give a variety of colour and texture and I prepared them to include in my design. As I sorted through the pile, I discovered that some of the bricks had names stamped on them; Whitfield, Hamblet and Haunchwood. I wondered where they had come from, they had definitely been in my garden for over forty years so they were not new. I began to research them, starting with the Whitfield bricks as they were labelled as of ‘Gloucester’.
The Whitfield brickworks were started on the south west side of Robinswood Hill about 1892 by Mr. George T. Whitfield, who laid out and entirely built them, at a cost of about £20,000. He built his own house at Fox Elms and many smaller houses for his employees. Less than 20 years later, the brickworks were taken over by a Limited Company, called the Robinswood Hill Brick and Tile Works, Ltd. The output consisted of facing bricks, common
pressed bricks, wire-cut bricks, and all kinds of moulded bricks, tiles, ridges, quarries, and agricultural drain-pipes.
The common bricks were made in a Bradley and Craven semi-plastic machine, the clay being ground in a perforated pan, then conveyed by means of elevators to a room above, and thence to a mixer, in which water was added, and the clay was made plastic. It was then conveyed to an upright pug-mill, through which it passed, and was forced into several boxes fixed round a rotary table, which, when turning, brought each box opposite the die-box, into which the clay was passed, under great pressure. The brick was then either stacked in drying-sheds or taken direct to the kiln.
The clay for the wire-cut bricks was also ground, then passed through a mixer, and afterwards through one of Pullen and Mann’s machines. The facing and moulded bricks were also made by a Pullen and Mann's machine, but were afterwards hand-pressed. The grinding of the clay was considered to be a great advantage, crushing, as it did, all the little ‘knots ’ [nodules] in the deposit.
All the sheds were heated by coal-fires, and when the bricks were sufficiently dried, they were loaded onto small trucks, which were passed on an endless chain down an inclined railway to the 14-chamber Hoffmann kiln; each chamber held 15,000 bricks. Gloucestershire County Council used bricks supplied by this firm in the erection of their premises adjoining the Shire Hall, Gloucester.
The Robinswood Hill Brick and Tile Works, Ltd, ceased production in the 1950s and the stack, which I well remember from my childhood, was removed in the 1960s.
The next set of bricks that we used were chosen for their colour, to give some variety. They were ‘blue’ bricks from the Hamblet Brick and Tile Company which was based in West Bromwich and was founded by Joseph Hamblet (1819 – 1894). The brickworks were
founded in 1851 and became one of the chief producers of Staffordshire blue bricks.
The Staffordshire blue brick is a very strong construction brick and was made from local red clay. When fired at a high temperature in a low-oxygen reducing atmosphere, the brick takes on a deep blue colour and attains a very hard, impervious surface with high crushing strength and low water absorption. This type of brick was used for foundations and was also extensively used for bridges and tunnels in the construction of canals, and later, of railways. Its lack of porosity makes it suitable for capping brick walls, and its hard-wearing properties makes it ideal for steps and pathways. It is also used as a general facing brick for decorative reasons.
Finally, I had two very small bricks, only about two-thirds of the size of normal bricks. These were stamped with the name Haunchwood of Nuneaton. The Haunchwood Brick and Tile Company of Nuneaton was founded in the early 1870s by James Knox (1849 – 1931) and was finally closed down a hundred years later, in 1870. Clay was mined from three small shafts.
I wondered why the Haunchwood bricks were so much smaller than the others but discovered from an online advert for the company, that they also made chimney pots, decorative ridges and finials and brick fireplaces. I believe my two ‘baby’ bricks could well have come from a brick fireplace.
The finished pavement
So that is one of the things I was doing in lockdown. The Archives would like to know what you were doing during the pandemic, for a new collection relating to the 2020 pandemic.
Liz Jack
Most of this information was found online; in particular, on Dr. Ray Wilson’s interesting website www.coaley.net (and it is not just Coaley) where, under the heading Brickmaking in Gloucestershire, I found an article by Richardson, L. and Webb, R. J., Brickearths, Pottery & Brickmaking in Gloucestershire, Proceedings of the Cheltenham Natural Science Society, Part 1: Volume 1 (4)
Read the complete December newsletter here