Focus on - Brick making in Stoke-on-Trent

Stoke-on-Trent is well supplied with beds of heavy clay suitable for making bricks. These included Etruria marl and Old Mill marl, together with that associated with the coal seams:- Black Band , and the Middle and Lower Coal measures.

see schematic of the geology of the area

The location of brickyards (and tileries) has been dictated by the presence of clay beds, and as these became exhausted or the clay pits too deep for economic working, new works were established on fresh clay sites. Derelict sites, represented by large holes (often filled with water) were a prominent feature in the North Staffordshire brick making districts.

Fenton Manor marl hole

2005 Google satellite photograph of the same area

Early brick making

Indications of Roman brick making is indicated by the presence of quantities of bricks on a site at Holditch (between Newcastle-under-Lyme and Chesterton) which was occupied from the late 1st to 3rd century AD. However Roman brick making was not extensive.

According to Plot a brick making clay was being extracted near Stoke-on-Trent in the later 17th century. He reported that 'on a bank by the way betwixt Newcastle and Keele' Plot met with a peculiar sort of brick-earth which became blue when heated. This was Etruria marl, which subsequently yielded enormous quantities of brickmaking material in the Potteries and also in the Black Country.

Etruria Marl:
Red brick clay for this area is called Etruria marl and that was and still is extracted by the opencast method. Big holes in the ground were always referred to as Marl Holes. Blue bricks are also made using Etruria marl, their hard solid blue colour is achieved during their firing using a reducing atmosphere cutting down on oxygen in the kiln.
By using higher firing temperatures and slightly reducing conditions, the surface of the brick was slightly vitrified and this gave a dark blue colour and a very high crushing strength. The brick was known as 'Staffordshire blue'

In the 19th century Staffordshire blue bricks were used for the construction of almost every railway, road and canal bridge in the West Midlands and indeed in most other parts of the country.

Staffordshire blue brick

The Geology of North Staffordshire

The Geology of North Staffordshire
Adapted from: 'Urban Studies in Stoke-on-Trent'
by Staffordshire Education Committee.

	Early brickmaking and the Geology of North Staffordshire (this page)
	Growth of brickmaking and photos of kilns and works
	Brickmaking in Stoke-on-Trent
	Brick manufacturers and brickworks jobs from the 1881 census
	Maps of marl holes in Stoke-on-Trent

the local history of Stoke-on-Trent, England	thepotteries.org
\| index page for 'focus on' \|