Changes in Technology continued...

"It was quite a long time before it changed, because it had- well, it changed by degrees you could say...the barrows, there was one thing I remember I used to tell Elizabeth- my wife. I want to get rid of our barrows, and at one time it was an ambition, that we virtually did achieve eventually. The first bit to move, I suppose was the barrow, to get rid of those barrows we used to have a mechanical shovel to do it- which is pretty obvious, what you do when you have a mechanical shovel. What changed- the fundamental change was when we scrapped to our mutal sorrow was the pit gang. We got our clay using one of these massive scrapers."

"There were two big areas where there were big changes in man power, one was this first area of clay digging and then the other was in the kiln- firing the bricks- the latter end of the process. When I went there we had- down draft kilns and Belgian kilns. Down draft kilns are just large brick structures which are made of refactories- and then you fill these structures with the green bricks- green being the un-fired colour."

The Brick Making Process