This extract is from the book Clay Stealers to St Pancras Station – A History of Nottingham’s Brick Makers, by Jeff Sheard. Published in 2012 and not available in a digital format, it is published here with kind permission of the author.
Top Yard – 1901
“About the time of the relief of Ladysmith during the Boer War, a Corporation committee visited the disused brickyard between Private Rd and Mapperley Rise with the idea of it being purchased and converted into a public recreation ground under the name of “Ladysmith Park” but the project was abandoned. Last year 1901 a great crowd gathered to witness the demolition of the high chimney of the disused kiln.”
The first of the Nottingham Patent Brick Company (NPBC) yards to be worked out and closed was Mapperley Top Yard at the corner of Private Road and Woodborough Road. Around the same time Nottingham’s last remaining brickyard site was purchased by the NPBC at Dorket Head, Arnold. The Arnold yard had been previously worked by a company called Robinson and Sykes.
Ordnance survey maps show that the clay reserves at the bottom yard in Mapperley, were already worked out by the 1930’s. The clay reserve between Woodthorpe Drive and Breckhill Road was then used until the yards at Mapperley finished in 1969, the clay being transported to the middle yard for brick production, using a continuous wire rope tramway passing through a tunnel below Woodthorpe Drive across the Bottom Yard and through more tunnels situated under Woodthorpe Road. The clay reserve was later used as a landfill site and landscaped in the 1970s to form Breck Hill Recreation Ground.
The three remaining yards of the NPBC at Mapperley and Thorneywood survived two world wars and a shrinking market for bricks. Thorneywood brickworks were the next to close in 1967. Mapperley Middle Yard was then used as the centre for brick production until the new plant at Dorket Head was up and running. Brick Production finally ceased at Mapperley in 1969, the last Hoffman kilns and chimneys on the site were demolished in 1970.
Middle Yard
Construction work on the Penarth Way and Gardens, the former clay reserve attached to the Middle Yard began even before brick production ceased. Work on the new estate by the developers Simms, Sons and Cook began in 1965. Working from the access road off Sherwood Vale, the houses were erected in an anticlockwise arrangement back into the estate. Some landfill occurred on the site of the former middle yard, especially in what became the car sales area. Brick debris was tipped from the demolition of the old St Ann’s area to form an embankment parallel to Woodborough Road, ironing out the serpentine contours of the clay face, and levelling the site, the embankment was then landscaped
It seems curious that the clay used to manufacture the bricks for housing in St Ann’s had completed a cycle, ending up back where it started from, over a hundred years earlier.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the remains of the old kilns and chimneys were not tipped into the same area. Recycled bricks were seen of little value at this time. They are now usually more expensive than their modern equivalents.
Because of the constraints of the site and other restrictions, only limited reserves of Keuper Marl can be extracted at Dorket Head for brick production. Ibstock Brick, one of the country’s leading manufacturers of facing bricks, owns the yard at Dorket Head, and is making plans for a possible new quarry situated to the east of the present site. One other alternative under consideration is a brand new brickmaking facility at Bilsthorpe, North Nottinghamshire.
The last brick to be made at Mapperley 2nd May 1969
Image courtesy of Nottingham City Museums & Galleries
Even before the last yards at Thorneywood and Mapperley were worked out and closed, they had begun to be used by the local population as places of recreation. The bottom yard became something of a nature reserve until the Springwood Gardens development took place in the 1970s. Any expanse of water in a built up area is a magnet for children, and Nottingham’s redundant brickyards were no exception. Many people who lived in the area have fond memories of hunting for newts as children in the redundant yards at Thorneywood and Mapperley during the 1950s and 60s.
Unofficial Adventure Playground
I have over the years spoken to many local people about the brickyards. Most have a tale to tell. Local kids from St Ann’s, Mapperley and other areas often visited the disused yards to mess about in the waterlogged yards. They would make rafts from redundant railway sleepers floating in the shallow water, abandoned by the brickmakers years ago. Skating and making slides in winter just like the children of earlier generations. Three lagoons existed at Mapperley bottom yard, which had been left pretty much alone for forty years or more, the area returning back to nature. The lagoons, one very deep being fed by natural springs, it was not unusual to find men seated around the ponds fishing. The perch fishing I have been told was particularly good.
A watchman, employed by the NPBC worked from a small cabin situated in the middle yard. He had the unenviable task of maintaining some kind of order over the local population of kids always looking for adventure. On his occasional patrols he seems to have turned a blind eye to most activities taking place on the redundant bottom yard, giving anyone present a little leeway, kids being kids. He took a dim view of anyone swimming in the lagoons, because of the danger, reprimanding anyone caught doing so.
When he was a schoolboy, George with his friends would catch the number 31 bus from St Ann’s to Mapperley. Sliding down the steep clay bank to enjoy the free leisure pursuits on offer at the old brickyard. Despite the danger sometimes swimming in the lagoons, keeping an eye out for ‘Jock’ the watchman just in case they had to make a hasty retreat, usually pausing to give himJock some ‘chelp’ as they scrambled back up the high clay bank.
My personal favourite anecdote about the yards highlights how times have changed since the 1960’s, regarding health, safety and security. Ray, a Daybrook lad, tells a funny story about the time he and his young mates decided to cadge a ride up to Mapperley. Climbing aboard a line of five empty tubs at Breckhill Clay Reserve, being pulled up to the Middle Jard by a continuous wire rope, all went well until they arrived at the bottom yard, after passing under Woodthorpe Drive where they were spotted by an irate brick worker. Ray, a real character now in his 60’s, still laughs out loud at the brick workers choice of expletives, as the unruly gang leapt off the tubs and pelted up the clay bank to Mapperley Top.
When bricks first began to be manufactured on a large scale to supply the demands of a growing industrial town, many brickyards existed, situated outside the town, but still close enough to easily transport millions of bricks for the town’s construction. Bricks are a fundamental part of Nottingham’s history. The industry involved in producing them is often overlooked and more often forgotten.
On the second of May 1969 after nearly 150 years service, the last brickyard within the city was closed at Mapperley.
Breck Hill Recreation Ground, formerly Bottom Yard. Image taken from the Friends of Breck Hill Park Facebook group.