Brick and Sanitary Pipe Works

Location of works and associated mines and quarries
1.Soil Hill 10. Allens
2. Ambler Thorn 11. Ash Grove
3. Howcans 12. Ashday
4. Charlestown 13. Calder
5. Ellen Royd 14. Luty
6. Beacon Hill 15. Storth
7. Bailey Hall 16. Woodman
8. Cinderhills 17. Blackley
9. Siddal

Cinderhills Brickworks was for over one hundred years home to Joseph Morton Ltd.
The Nestle factory near Halifax Railway Station is built on the site of the Swan Bank Brick Companies, Bailey Hall works. The dark area behind the building is where the shale to make the bricks was quarried. It is now a car park for the factory employees.

Ambler Thorn Fire-Clay Works home of Parkinson Spencer Refractories Ltd who still manufacture specialist refractory wares such as glass retorts. The hillside to right of the picture bears the scars of many years of fireclay mining.

At Blackley clay and shale have been mined and quarried from the mid 19th century and in the twentieth century became the home of "Wilkinsons of Elland" who stamped that proud boast on all their bricks. This brickworks closed in 1985.

The quarry has now become a landfill site but luckily a few buildings from the Blackley Mine have survived.

Evidence of Kilns

Above unusually shaped burnt bricks built into a wall on Dewsbury Road Elland close to the location of Henry Hawkyard's brickworks.

Above & below - these burnt tiles on Turner Lane are probably from the works of Oates and Green at Ellen Royd.

Although most of the kiln sites have been destroyed it is still possible to find clues to their existence. Kiln floors could be made of blocks containing holes to allow hot gasses to pass into the kiln occasionally as on Turner Lane these survive through reuse. The materials to be fired would be stacked on special fire resistant bricks and blocks, these would also be used to seal the kiln door. On Dewsbury Road Elland these have found a new use as walling materials. Note how the blocks and bricks have been made unusual sizes so that the do not get mixed up with the other bricks in the kiln.