Watnall Brickworks, Nottingham - March 09

Did you know that Watnall brickworks made the bricks not from clay, but from colliery spoil? One of the sources of this spoil was by rail from Moorgreen pit, a train came every day at approx 3:30 pm with about 10 wagons of spoil, and then after much puffing (ah the days of steam) and shunting dropped the wagons off and returned to Moorgreen with the previous days empty wagons.
Moorgreen Pit

We also got spoil by road from Wollaton colliery. I believe this was because Wollaton pit was in a built up area and there were no tips attached to the colliery, the only way to dispose of the waste was to cart it away by road. One of my duties was to book the lorries in at the Watnall brickworks.

The waste was then fed into a crushing machine were it was ground to a texture finer than talcum powder. It was then mixed with water to form a 'puddle' clay. It was then put into moulds and shaped, under pressure, into bricks. These were then put into the kilns to bake for about 14 days. The works produced common bricks, these were used to build the inner walls of buildings, none of your breeze block inner walls in those days. We also supplied 'puddle' bricks to the East Midlands collieries. These unbaked bricks were used to stop up 'Gob' fires down the mines.

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Lightbuoy said:

Like the "then & now" shots -thanks

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Kaputnik said:

a tunnel went about 20ft or so underground and then turned a corner, maybe an air shaft?

quite a day for chimney visits, that sunday, as we'd just come from seeing the dyeworks one being blown down,
thanks for looking.

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85 Vintage said:

.....Don't think the dog idea would work

Good pics mate

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