Bricks (2)

Where there were brick yards there sometimes used to be terracotta works. Locally made plaques on buildings are very common in the Ellistown area.

Mr Woolley: The way they filled, I don’t know whether you understand the brick kilns…?

Interviewer: I think you’d better describe it.

Mr Woolley: Well you have a circular kiln which was 30 feet diameter, and looking as I’ve already said like a pork pie. And round the perimeter, on the walls, they had what the called wickets.

Interviewer: Wickets?

Mr Woolley: Wickets, w.i.c.k.e.t.s.

Interviewer: Which were?

Mr Woolley: Well they were archway, archway holes, that shape, in the form of an arch, like a doorway, where the men used to go in with barrows from where they made the bricks. Push them in on the barrows and stack them in the kilns, and they would stack them from floor to ceiling all the way round leaving just sufficient passages through the kilns on either side and all round it, so they could walk round to stack them. Then they would light a fire on these kilns, on these wickets, they’d brick most of them up, leave a hole, light a fire, so that the fire was beginning to burn, then they would seal these wickets up completely, by putting temporary bricks in, plastering it up. Then once the fire was established, which was done on a proper kiln basis so there was a draft coming from underneath, the kiln would set alight and then they fed it after that from the top by small holes, about six inches diameter, with a little lid on the top where they used to get it off with a hook, and they had a little dustpan and a heap of coal at the side of each of these holes, and they used to feed the coal in and keep the fire going for, say, three weeks, roughly. From start to finish it would possibly, they way I remember it would take three weeks to burn a whole kiln of bricks.

Interviewer: And the fuel was always coal, not wood or charcoal?

Mr Woolley: No, no. They used to start it with coal, er, with wood. Then once it had got alight at the bottom they used to put the coal in, which would then ignite in itself, and once it was hot then they used to have to keep it going for three weeks or more.

Interviewer: And then it would take several days to cool down?

Mr Woolley: Well it would take more than that. If I remember correctly - of course I’m going back a long while you see – I would think it would take probably a week to cool down.

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