Changes in Technology

"Well from the point of view of the building bricks, I would say that the biggest changes were in the initial process and in all but the final process- the initial process being- that the relatively straight forward one of getting the clay out of the pit... From time to time we would go along to the local farmer and say we're running a bit low on- now mate, can we have a bit more of you're land? And he was usually a nice chap and said yes, when do you want it? And we always gave him warning because we didn't like to pay for a crop that he had already sown, and was looking forward to making a profit on, so we gave him plenty of warning, but we would take quite a chunk out of a fairly large field- that's the sort of area we are talking about and then eventually as we moved on, we back filled. Being good housekeepers we filled the thing behind us and put top soil on top- and he would be growing his wheat and stuff behind us you see."

" So that's about the size of that- we used to get this clay with what we called our pit gang, which numbered about seven or eight men, and they had pneumatic drills and we had a little loco. I used to love to drive this loco when I first went up there because I always wanted to ride on the thing...it had- I don't know, seven or eight trucks and we got to the little railway where the operational side of the work was started, down to the face of the pit and these chaps used to fill each of these little trolleys- it was well done, in fact, because they could very accurately put all brown into one trolley."

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