At vesting day in 1947 the National Coal Board became owners of 83 brickworks and 2 pipe works associated with collieries. I have been attempting to find a comprehensive list of these works but so far without success. Can anyone point me towards a list or am I going to have to put one together piecemeal?

Cheers,

At vesting day in 1947 the National Coal Board became owners of 83 brickworks and 2 pipe works associated with collieries. I have been attempting to find a comprehensive list of these works but so far without success. Can anyone point me towards a list or am I going to have to put one together piecemeal?

Cheers,

There are plenty of enthusiastic brick-collectors around. They must have web sites that deal with this sort of thing.

Have a Google.

I already spent a fair time searching on line before posing the question. I cannot find anything near a comprehensive list, or indeed any list. Dave Sallery's web site has photos of a few examples of bricks from NCB works, but not many when you see how many brickworks there actually were. I was rather hoping that someone on Adit Now might have a document or have come across a list somewhere.

I think Al and your good self are gonna have to be the ones to pull something together. :thumbup:

I know there was one attached to Alfreton colliery, we used to go fishing in the quarry. 🙂

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If you seriously look on the internet,there are websites for bricks a plenty,right through the UK Coalfields

I would say closer to your figure of 80 ,than a few photos,

There must have been 20-30 in South Wales alone,the Midlands are riddled with them.

Stourbridge Brick company also had a brickworks in South Wales,they made bricks ,that some were the size of a rock face concrete block.

We had a brickworks at Cronton Colliery Lancashire. The control of it was taken over by The London Brick Co. in the 1960s. The L.B.C. was owned by the NCB.

Tarbie owd cocker, why didn't ask me, don't be shy!
The NCB only set up the Brickworks Executive as a separately managed concern in 1962.
The Colliery Year Book and Coal Trades Directory for 1963 has a list of the brickworks (Guide to the Coalfields doesn't), mentioning 62 (Blaydon twice, two types of bricks so that's probably 61 brickworks).
In the NW we had Bickershaw, Cronton, Gadbury and Ellenbrook still in operation in 1962.
I used to build 'houses' with my sister in 1962 at Gadbury Brickworks, across the road from Gibfield Colliery, Atherton. The 'commons' had razor sharp edges.
:smartass:

Beamish museum has a wall built out of bricks from different colliery brickworks all over the North east.

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Tarbie owd cocker, why didn't ask me, don't be shy!
The NCB only set up the Brickworks Executive as a separately managed concern in 1962.
The Colliery Year Book and Coal Trades Directory for 1963 has a list of the brickworks (Guide to the Coalfields doesn't), mentioning 62 (Blaydon twice, two types of bricks so that's probably 61 brickworks).
In the NW we had Bickershaw, Cronton, Gadbury and Ellenbrook still in operation in 1962.
I used to build 'houses' with my sister in 1962 at Gadbury Brickworks, across the road from Gibfield Colliery, Atherton. The 'commons' had razor sharp edges.
:smartass:

Ah, that explains part of my problem as I only have the Guide to the Coalfields for 1962. I would appreciate that list from the Year Book if and when you have time. That is going to leave 21 to 24 more to find, plus any new ones they opened such as Skares in Scotland.

Beamish museum has a wall built out of bricks from different colliery brickworks all over the North east.

I remember seeing a fair collection of colliery bricks at Apedale during this years NAMHO meet.

The best listings of nationalised brickworks for 1947 are in:

Colliery Yearbook & Coal Trades Directory, 1947 ed.

Guide to the Coalfields, 1947 ed.

Directory of Quarries, Clay Pits & Brickworks (the title kept changing the order of the words between editions); unsure of which edition was closest to 1947.

In south Wales many nationalised brickworks were placed within the wholly owned NCB subsidiary, the British Anthracite Company, which also operated the some of the railway wagon works that were taken over at nationaluisation.

If you combine the information in these three directories you should get close to the complete list.

The National Brick Collection of the National Museum of Wales holds over 600 different Welsh-made bricks, tiles, pipes and refractories, most of them from south Wales. A small selection, plus a Bradely & Craven brick making machine from Emlyn Colliery Brickworks, are on display in the National Waterfront Museum at Swansea. The reserve store that the remainder are housed in is closed to public access for around a year due to building work.

From recollection, only three Welsh brickworks actually put "NCB" on their products: Onllwyn, Tredegar and a third that I cannot at present remember.

Brickworks that were owned by British Anthracite that I can recall include Cynchordy, Goodwick, Trimsaran though some were absorbed long after 1947, having remained independent for some years. So although ultimately owned by the NCB, they would not appear on the list of brickworks taken over in 1947.

NCB Coedely is the missing one.

I have the 1947 Guide to the Coalfields and the 1948 Coal Trades Directory and neither have lists of brickworks, unless my eyes are going!

The NCB archives at the National Archives will cover brickyard acquisition, there may be a list in the catalogue via the Access to Archives link on their web site

Hmm, Pipe works, there used to be one associated with Cotes Park, at the side of Birchwood Lane, near Pennytown, don't know if it was NCB though. (Derbyshire).

Used to fish in them ponds as well.

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NCB Coedely is the missing one.

Thanks, Ty Gwyn.

For quite a while, bricks inscribed 'OEDEL' puzzled me until I realised that they were 'COEDELY' bricks with bolt holes in the die obscuring the 'C' and the 'Y'.

I have the 1947 Guide to the Coalfields and the 1948 Coal Trades Directory and neither have lists of brickworks, unless my eyes are going!

I'm sure you're correct. I'll have to re-check when these two publications began to list NCB-owned brickworks. Will post the results here in a few days.

two of my local collieries had brickworks which continued to function after 1947. Sharlston West Colliery (Walton after nationalisation) bricks say SHARLSTON. Locke and Co (St. John's after Nationalisation) I think bricks were stamped NEWLAND which is where the Colliery was situated between Normanton and Wakefield.

The Colliery Yearbook & Coal Trades Directory did not list NCB brickworks in 1947, 1948 or 1949 but did list them from 1953. I have not been able to consult the editions from 1950 to 1952 to find out what year the brickworks began to be listed.


I checked various 1950s editions of the Guide to the Coalfields. None listed NCB brickworks, only naming the divisional brickworks managers.

I checked the south Wales portions of various editions 1950s of the Directory of Quarries, Clay Pits & Brickworks (the title kept changing the order of the words between editions). NCB owned brickworks were, to my surprise, not listed. Only one brickworks owned by British Anthracite was listed - Llangennech, near Llanelli in Carmarthenshire, which was listed under Glamorgan because the registered office of British Anthracite was in Swansea.

So it looks as if the Colliery Yearbook & Coal Trades Directory will provide the most accessible lists of NCB owned brickworks.