The brickworks

Last updated: 22 March 2006

The brickworks stood with the screens at the foot of Slater’s Incline, where the tubs came down from Bank Top and Far Colliery. The concern was never only coal. Brick and stone went out on the same waggonway that served the pit, and the siding bed is still the place to see it.

Foundations and a length of siding bed, as marked on the sketch map. The ground is wet after rain.

What remains is marked on the sketch map by foundations and a length of siding bed. The ground is wet after rain, and boots are kinder than town shoes. It is not a building you go into. It is a ground you stand on, and the gallery has the photographs of the kilns as they stood.

Employment at the pit and brickworks together reached a little over one hundred men and boys about 1914. The rows along the waggonway were built for that work. The four rows remain lived in. The chapel at the west end is used. From 1946 the Forestry Commission took men on throughout the upper valley; forestry, the pit and the stone have since been the ordinary work of the place.

The parish trail does not go down to the siding. The cut of the incline may be seen from the trail as you come through the memorial garden. The incline itself is a working way and is not a walk. For the colliery as a whole, see Mining.