How a small-scale, local brick maker on the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire borders became one of England’s major producers.

19^th Century

            Brick-making was a natural concomitant of coal mining not only because of the proximity of the raw materials, but also due to the need for bricks to line shafts and for the buildings that were needed on the surface.  Butterley had several small brickworks for the company’s own purposes by the mid-19^th century and by 1890 was producing more than 750,000 bricks a year from a works at Codnor Park, but this was insufficient even for the company’s own requirements.  New investment there would raise annual production to some 2 million bricks by the end of the century and then to between 3 and 4 million a year in the decade following.  It was, however, still a small-scale, loss-making operation with only 25 staff, which was seen as a subsidiary of the Codnor Park Forge and Wagon Works, and it was closed in 1914/15

20^th Century

            The company’s hitherto ambivalent approach to brick-making changed in 1914 when it took the decision to make a substantial investment in new plant at Waingroves, just south of Ripley, complete with one of the modern Hoffmann kilns. The timing was unfortunate and it was not until 1921 that the new works was to come into full production, but by then the company’s board had made a further commitment to brick-making by authorising the construction of new works at Kirkby and Ollerton.  These would not only fulfil the company’s own requirements for its Kirkby colliery and the village it was intending to build to support its new pit at Ollerton, but would also take advantage of the massive national need for new housing after the end of the First World War.  By 1936 Butterley’s output from these three works had risen to some 28 million bricks a year. 

            The Second World War would bring expansion to a halt, but it did not dampen the company’s ideas for the future, which were conditioned by the nationalisation of its collieries, which the board had foreseen before the war and resulted in the loss of its site at Kirkby.  An existing works at Ambergate was acquired, which had supplied bricks for Liverpool’s cathedral, and soon afterwards the company extended its reach to Blaby, just south of Leicester.  This geographical growth meant that Butterley Brick could expand the range of bricks it offered and also enabled it to use different types of raw materials. The company now also had the technical expertise to take advantage of the most modern production methods.  Its new works at Kirton, which opened in 1956, would be based upon a concept of indoor, factory-style production using a 20^th century development of the Hoffmann kiln with modern fuelling and mechanical handling processes.  Six years later it would open Britain’s first fully-automated production plant at Waingroves.

            Butterley Brick was no longer the small-time, local producer it had been in 1914.  It had become a substantial regional player whose annual output had risen to more than 93 million.

Aglite

            In 1950 Butterley had purchased a small brickworks at Salterwood, near its former Denby Hall colliery.  It was here in 1957 that it set up a plant to make Aglite, an expanded aggregate made by sintering shales at very high temperature.  The product had good insulation characteristics and could be used as a screed or formed into lightweight blocks similar to those which were becoming widely used for internal construction purposes. The decision was far-sighted but despite the product’s proven advantages the manufacturing process caused pollution problems; nor could it compete with other block-making methods which were less energy-intensive.  Eventually Butterley Brick bowed to the inevitable and Aglite production was ceased.

Postscript

           1967, the year of the Wiles Group bid, was a bad year for construction and the stocks of unsold bricks at the company’s five works – Kirton, Waingroves, Tuckers (Loughborough), Blaby and Ambergate – were at an all-time high.  But under its new ownership, Hanson’s Butterley Building Materials division, led by Butterley people, would drive a substantial consolidation of the facing brick industry.  In 1970 National Star Brick and Tile, based in Caerleon, would be acquired; soon followed by Castle Brick and then the brick-making sites of the National Coal Board.  Finally, in 1984 Hanson would take over the largest brick-maker of all: London Brick Company.

With acknowledgements to Roy Christian, “Butterley Brick; 200 years in the making”, 1990, Henry Melland, London.

(The article was written by Mr Tom Denniford, who was employed by Butterley as Group Surveyor and Land Agent at the time of the takeover by the Wiles Group in 1968.)