Nutbourne Brickworks, Surrey - June

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Breesey

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Hey all! Went for a little explore the other day, to the Nutbourne Brickworks. Seems like a pretty far out place, with the local area being very sparsely inhabited (and also very beautiful). The atmosphere was pretty haunting, with plenty of signs of people having recently inhabited the place, and some dogs barking incessantly. Presumably they were riled up about something else, but it still kept my hackles up.

Nutbourne Brickworks was opened in the summer of 1932, and and has changed little since then. It started to be considered out of date in the 80's, and was closed for 'refurbishment' in 1990. Presumably the recession of the time put paid to those plans, and it's since laid dormant. It seems that in recent years, the land has been purchased by Millgate Homes, with plans to develop some sort of mansion on the site, known colloquially as "Hambledon Palace". The estate, worth £20m is rumoured to be the intended home for our recently married Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. I think it is better served as a fascinating insight into one of Britain's dead industries, and a great place to explore.

Onto the site;

As soon as you enter the site, the first thing that strikes is the collapsed warehouse. How this happened, I don't know, but it must have made the most terrific racket as it fell.






This photo feel so chaotic


Chilling outside what I believe were the kilns. Some of them were accessible, but I was too scared of the lid closing to go inside.


Say when!




For some reason, this place was absolutely full of chairs! Often arranged in social patterns. Must have been a cool place to hang out.






more chairs!







This bit used to be a quarry I think. Some pictures I saw showed it still empty, so I guess it's only filled up recently.


Very disappointed that I couldn't find any bricks with Nutbourne inscribed. I think Southwater is a clay mining location, so maybe it refers to that. I'm not at all what the protocol for brick inscriptions is.








The floor here was pretty rotten where it had been exposed to the elements, had to be pretty light footed.






So yeah, made a pretty interesting explore, kept constantly alert due to the dogs barking and the constant signs of inhabitation.
 
Nice pics from a great location; you're right, this is a very atmospheric place - I've spent many quiet hours wandering round it myself. The 'kilns' in picture 4 are actually dryers, used to 'cure' the bricks before firing. The original Hoffman kilns stood under two large sheds (one of which is the collapsed one - the ducting on the ceiling led to the chimney) and have sadly been demolished.

Re the brick, Southwater was a brickworks near Horsham which closed down in the '80s. Like Nutbourne it was also owned by Redland. I also have a feeling that both works were owned by the Sussex and Dorking Brick Company before Redland acquired them in around the 50s but I don't know why there should be so many Southwater bricks here.

The site is visited periodically by some sort of caretaker. He wasn't particularly concerned about me taking photographs when I met him last year but asked if I'd seen any poachers. Apparently there's good fishing in those claypits.
 
Yeah, I saw quite a few fish jumping in the lake for the brief period I was there.
Cheers guys!
 


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