SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

There is a large pile of recently excavated bricks on land near the junction of Royal Park Road and Queens Road in Hyde Park. As long as I can remember it has been a scrap car lot, or just waste ground. Has just been cleared and leveled.

On the 1894 OS map it is marked as a brick works, with what could be a clay pit on site. The buildings in the brick works look to have been on the site of what is now the Royal Park pub.

I thinks it's closer to the brudenell social.

rikj wrote:There is a large pile of recently excavated bricks on land near the junction of Royal Park Road and Queens Road in Hyde Park. As long as I can remember it has been a scrap car lot, or just waste ground. Has just been cleared and leveled.

On the 1894 OS map it is marked as a brick works, with what could be a clay pit on site. The buildings in the brick works look to have been on the site of what is now the Royal Park pub.

The scrapyard was the claypit Rik.....

They could not build on it because the cinder infill was too soft. I think it needs piling for the new development.

This is the Cardigan Brickworks run by George Johnson with his partner Mr. Wroe.

And yes the Royal Park is where the kilns were.

Look out for hefty bricks marked "J & W"..........

Cardiarms wrote:I thinks it's closer to the brudenell social.

Yep the Brudenell is the southern part of the site, look out for those J & W bricks.

That's great info, thanks.

rikj wrote:There is a large pile of recently excavated bricks on land near the junction of Royal Park Road and Queens Road in Hyde Park.

Rik

Thanks for the tip, there's bricks from Wortley "INGHAM & SON" Horsforth "J,W.S" Armley "W.S" and the usual suspects Armitage and Whittakers.

None from the cardigan works. I think the explanation is they sold all the bricks off the site and on closure the clay pit will have been backfilled with hardcore, rubbish and ashes hence the bricks in the waste hardcore have come in from outside the site.

But I kept the Ingham & sons brick!!!

Here's a super example of a clay pit shaft at the brickworks of the Holbeck Brick Company


http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... 0_79110354

Would be nice to work out the orientation in that pic. From maps, the only place on Shafton Lane with a clay pit looks to have been west of the junction with Ingram Road. Marked as Central Works, with two distinct oval building, kilns I assume.

It's marked as an opencast site, which fits with the current use as allotments and playing fields. At least two buildings seem to be extant from the brick works era, one a particularly nice small brick building with an oversize chimney, Blacksmith's shop for the pit perhaps?

Snapped a few months ago by coincidence, photo hopefully attached. BTW, piling has started on the Royal Park site.

Thanks for the info on the Royal Park site. The BW&S brick on the pile was inaccessible unless one broke the fence and trespassed, but another was found by the Highland this being an early Horsforth Brick.

JTH (Towler) may have operated a brick field firstly at Shafton Lane, then Joseph Morton (bricks JM&S) and then Braithwaite (bricks AN&B) also some marked Holbeck and Holbeck Brick company.

The claypit looks to have been dug for may a year and on the site late 1930's maps mark old shafts so they did sink a shaft to get at something whether coal or clay.

One of the oldest claypits is noted by Beresford on the south side of Park Square dug to make the bricks for the North, east and west sides!!

2,000,000 handmade bricks came out of it. Beresford noted that when cellars were dug on new housing developments in Leeds they often used the clay they dug out of the cellar to make the bricks for the houses!!

Hoping that a quick wander off-topic is OK. Where I used to live in east Leeds under the shallow top soil the garden was clay, so it is likely there is still a plentiful supply of clay around for making bricks. Potatoes always grew well in the clayey soil!

PS. In a post of mine on December 17 2014 in the 'Victoriagate/Eastgate Quarter Development' thread with a photo I took on December 16 2014 during some demolition of Millgarth Police Station I stated "As I was there a man was talking to the workmen and they gave him a couple or so bricks from the waste spoil. I was asked if I wanted a brick but I'm not a brick collector so I said no but thanked them". I now wonder who made the bricks?