Rowlands Castle Brickworks

A Memory of Rowlands Castle.

Rowlands Castle Brickworks originally established during the 1880’s, and must have been the biggest employer at the time, next to agriculture. Not all the workforce came form Rowlands Castle, but from local villages in the surrounding area, the site itself was a large sprawling layout, the clay pits took up most of the land. During its hay day as many one hundred people were working there, the work would have been hard manual labour, before electrification that relieved some of the hard work; there is evidence pottery production in the area going back to the Romano-British period.  
Most of our family had work at the brickyard in the past; there was factory work in the local towns which of course these paid more. My Uncle Frank and Geoff were there along with my cousin Dave Jacobs, my Uncle Douglas also worked there for a short time driving the Lorries. Dad worked there as lad, before joining the Navy. One of his first jobs was barrowing coal from the wagons in the railway sidings to the Lancaster boilers, conditions were tough then during the 1930’s and had not changed very much since the turn of the century. The buildings were mainly brick construction with tin roofing which leaked, broken windows, it was cold and damp and draughty, and the lighting was very poor.
Even when I started there things had not improved much,  I was used too these conditions and discomfort, one of my first jobs there was working on the cutting table making bricks.  This involved a slug of clay being cut into around a 2ft (600mm) length then slide it to the ram which would push the clay through the ten wires forming it into sandfaced or wirecuts (green bricks), this was a messy job covered in sand and diesel oil which was used to help the clay and bricks slide on the table. Stillages were used to stack these bricks, around 150 bricks; on strips of 2’’x 1” timber this allowed the air to circulate which helped the drying process. These stillages were moved to the drying tunnels, by battery operated electric trolleys, if the electric trolleys were not charged or broken down, we would have to use the use old method of crowding barrows. This was hard tiring work, as you had to keep up with the pace of the mill, these barrows were loaded by hand with sixty green bricks, they had to be loaded correctly otherwise they would overbalance. there was an art in loading these barrows would make it difficult to run with, it also took a great deal of skill to get  the balance of right so you could run with it, but once you mastered it like any thing else it was easy, of course a few barrows went over in the process, we’d run these barrows from the table to the drying tunnels up to 50 yards there and back.
Of course this was, alot slower system, and like all lads we used to skylark around, we’d put  lumps of clay in the path of our mates barrows, yes you’ve guessed it, the barrows would  go over. I must have got this off my father, up to mischief and up to no good skylarking around; this would get the floor walker Jack Burt annoyed.
There would be times when we would have to run the dried bricks from the drying tunnels to the kilns by using the barrows or electric trucks.  As lads we used to skylark around, this of course eventually lead to us being separated, I was banished to the pit nobody liked it out there, my Uncle Geoff operated the 10-ton Ruston Bycruss excavator, the type with an up lift bucket, digging the clay from a 30ft face, about ¼ ton of clay was dumped into a side tipping wagons, these wagons had to be pushed by brute force no motors we’d pushed these wagons, approx 400yards along a narrow gauge rail track, once you got the wagon rolling we’d jump on the back, there was no braking system on these wagons, so to control the speed, we had a wooden shaft that would be jammed against the wheel, to slow them down, sometimes you could get up a fair old lick, and we’d lose control and the wagons would come off the track on the corners.
Once we reach the end of the track the wagons were attached a wire hawser and would be pulled up to the top of the rolling mill. The rolling mill consisted of two Bennet & Sayer 38 ton rollers in a pan about 9ft in diameter this was a noisy job, the rollers would crush the clay which was mixed with water in the pan to soften it then forced through ½ to ¾ inch gratings, then through a two further set of horizontal rollers, then into dies to form a clay slug at the table. My cousin Dave Jacobs looked after this operation a winch raised and lowered the wagons to us in the pit.  Conditions in the pit were atrocious, the only shelter we had was an old tin shack at the bottom of the ramp, no toilets, it was very basic a wooden bench, we had to eat our sandwiches at lunch time out in the pit, an old oil drum brazier for the fire to keep us warm during the perishing cold wet winter months, the ground would be sticky and slippery puddles everywhere, this gave me an understanding of what those soldiers must have felt like in the trenches during the First World War still we were lucky nobody was shooting at us.
To sustain any sort of viable living the brickworks was committed to producing 100,000 bricks per week this was a high demand, for a works like Rowlands, The London Brick Company and this was the death of Rowlands Castle Brick Works 1968.

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