Brickworks in Buckinghamshire

The 'custom mold' room. An amazing space filled with the legacy of bespoke modules.


 After the desolation of the Warsaw brickyards, the bustle of the H. G. Matthews factory in Chesham was heartening. It was a hot, sunny day- perhaps England will have a summer after all- but they were doing a wood firing as well as making new bricks. 
The forming process is interesting because they have two groups of workers, forming at the same time: one group works with a machine, and the other molds by hand.

The machine-forming group. The worker on the right demolds the bricks that have come out of the machine, and spins them on the turntable to the worker on the left, who shelves them for drying.

The brick-making machinery reminded me of the Charlie Chaplin film Hard Times, all squeaky gears, thick belts, and cogwheels.

The hand-forming group. Wooden molds of four bricks each are filled, scraped, demolded, and shelved.

They fire with both wood and oil; the oil fires can get up to 1300C, which results in some of the bricks being 'overburnt'- they are no longer red, but brown, and the iron inside melts to form black patches.

This is an easier way to mix clay...
I asked them about the flint in their clay. Apparently, there are pockets of clay with flint, and pockets without, and they will excavate until they find a pocket without flint, rather than try to remove it. They have an increasingly hard time finding sources of clean clay, however. Land in this area, so close to London, is extremely valuable, and it is difficult to get permits to dig.


It seems like the demand exceeds the supply- but maybe because there used to be over 20 brickyards in Buckinghamshire, and now there are only two.