Due to local deposits of clay there has been a long history of brickmaking in the  Kirkheaton area. It has been said that bricks have been made at the Bellstring brickworks since 1700 but I have yet to find sound evidence. More recently Kirkheaton Brickworks was situated on Laneside [previously known as Hole Bottom and Cemetery Road] It was incorporated in 1935 with registered offices at 25 Fenay Bridge Road, Lepton. The business probably closed around 1974.

With a crushing strength of 538 tons per square foot the bricks were renowned for their hardness – a fact used in 1939 when they advertised the bricks as being eminently suitable for constructing air raid shelters.

Clay from the quarry was brought in tubs to the brickworks where it was mixed with water to form the correct consistency. This was then fed into a pressing machine to form “green bricks”. Women offloaded the bricks and “Wheelers” took these to the kiln with “Setters” transferring them into the kiln. “Burners” fired the kilns attending to them day and night. Additional coal mined on site was added to the Staffordshire kiln as required. In 1951 the works employed about 30 people and cash wages were brought to the site every Friday by a Mr Freeman, a director of the brickworks and partner of Brook, Freeman and Sommerville-Jones, Solicitors. Mr Freeman arrived by bus with the money in his attaché case!

A Staffordshire kiln at Mirfield Brickworks-Courtesy Kirklees Image Archive

When the brickworks closed, Elliots [the owners] had plans to transport clay from the site to Spa Bottom [Fenay Bridge] by a conveyor system but this never materialised and eventually the site was sold to Casey Enviro for landfill.

 

 

 

 

I would welcome any information or photographs of this business to help complete the history.

John Taylor-Kirkheaton History Group