Burgess Hill’s brick and tile heyday

By Frederic Avery

Adapted from the study published privately by F. M. Avery in 1980;  Now with additional material from the early censuses and other sources, supplied by Heather Warne  for her ‘Heart of Burgess Hill: the brick and tile makers of St. John’s Common 1550-1860’ (forthcoming).

The old St John’s Common had not been exclusively rural since the mid-1500s, due to the early brick and tile trade which developed there, with pottery flowering from the mid-1700s. But it was not until the common was turned into building plots around 1830-1850 and the town of Burgess Hill began to grow, that these three skills would develop on new expanded premises and define the new town as a centre for brick and tile manufacture. Two small-scale but flourishing brick, tile and pottery establishments, Meeds in Station Road and Dunstall’s, at the corner of the north part of Fairfield Road, had continued in production without break from the 17^th century. They survived into the 20^th century, holding their own against the competition which came from the many new works springing up once the common had been enclosed.

From 1830 onwards, the most familiar sights to local residents must have been the many rows of long narrow sheds, kilns, large mounds of clay left to weather, brushwood bundles, bricks and terracotta products which dominated the scene in almost all directions. At times adverse weather conditions would have caused dense smoke to cover the entire area, according to one recorded account. The brickmaking process contributed mainly to this hazard, since many vast ‘clamps’ of bricks were left burning in the open for a number of weeks until ready for distribution. Kilns used for firing terra-cotta goods were another source of smoke emission, though not so great a menace as the clamp burning of bricks. Apart from the well-surfaced turnpike road (the London Road) the other local roads presented another problem in wet weather when, at times, some of the unmade surfaces became deeply rutted and impassable on foot or by horse-drawn wagons. These abominable conditions were endured by the local inhabitants for more many decades before a ‘Local Board’ was formed and measures were taken to remedy the situation.

In 1841 the census shows that there were around 41 persons in Burgess Hill cited as brickmakers, tilers or potters, or simply as labourers in the yards. At least half of them had been recruited from outside the county. Many of them were cited in the census as ‘head of family’, which means that the local trade was then supporting upwards of 100 people. The proprietor of the late Charles Shaw’s new works was then his widow Elizabeth, described as ‘Pottery and Brickmaker’ and registered under Brick Yard Cottage. The former proprietor was her late husband, Charles Shaw who had only recently died. He had formerly been the manager at Meeds Yard, who had set up his new works in the London Road once the Common enclosure gave him the chance. It was a large new site which the Gravett family would soon take over. (Pottery no. 3 on the OS map) Charles and Elizabeth had formerly lived at their fine new residence on the south side of Station Road, Edith House.

By 1851 the number of skilled makers had expanded and their dependent families and brickyard labourers had also increased. The brick yard proprietors enumerated were Barbara Norman then aged 55 of ‘Brick Yard House’ (also known as Diamond Cottage on the Clayton side of the London Road), proprietor of Norman’s works on the other side of the road. She was described as ‘Brickmaker and Potter and Employer of 20 men and 5 boys’ (2. Or ‘Pottery no. 2’ on the OS map). Widow Elizabeth Shaw was still living at her late husband’s yard in 1851, but described as an annuitant (pensioner) and her brother Michael Longmer Daynes was managing the works. At the Meeds yard in Station Road, James Meeds was described as brickmaker and Master employing 29 men and 7 boys. Not only the brickyard labourers increased in number, but there were now several builders (then described as ‘bricklayers’) living in close proximity to the yards, ready to build houses with the output of bricks and tiles. One young lad aged 15 was described as a ‘waggoner’s boy at the brickyard. New livings could be earned in getting the products away. The yards themselves were all then in Keymer parish, Norman’s and Shaw’s both being on the east side of the London Road and Meeds’s in Pottery Lane (Station Road).

The following images show:

First -Edith House: the formerly- elegant home of William Shaw (died 1841) former manager of ‘Meeds’, and developer of the works later known as Gravetts, ; photographed in decline as part of the London Road School complex.

Second – kilns formerly on the south side of Station Road, on the brick, tile and pottery site founded in 1675 by John Marten, latterly known as “Meeds”

Third – the Norman family home, Latchetts, at the bottom of Church Road, on land first taken in for brickmaking in 1660 by an early brickmaker, Samuel Marten.

Between 1851 and 1871 the number of people employed in or supported by the industry substantially increased to keep pace with the demand for their products. The land sales at the enclosure of the Clayton side of the Common in 1855 brought a new works to the London Road, established by Charles Tulley and his father-in-law, Thomas Avery, farmer of 70 acres at Fowles Farm, west of the works. Operated by Richard Berry and his son Frederick, the works were on the west of London Road, just south of the former Royal George Public House (No. 4 or ‘Pottery no. 1’ on the OS map).

A ‘Local Board’ was established in 1879 to set up an administration for the town, which became an Urban District Council in 1894. The majority of the twelve members elected to the early Board were associated with the brick and tile making establishments but they too were concerned with the lack of good roads (ruined mainly by wagons carrying clay products) and they set about the task of surfacing the main roads and pavements, and improving the inadequate drainage. Until 1886 there were hardly any paved footpaths and an increase in local rates was unavoidable if these problems were to be addressed. Although this caused a brief slump in brick and tile output as people started to move away, they drifted back later as higher rates became general elsewhere. The local Board then developed the idea of Burgess Hill as a ‘health resort’, which attracted people to build on the hill, where some ‘health hydros’ later sprang up.

While Meeds’, Dunstall’s, Gravett’s and Norman’s brick and tile works continued to flourish through the late 19^th and into the early 20^th century, the Keymer Brick and Tile works outlasted them all. In 1873, Sampson Copestake, a merchant and senior partner of the firm Copestake, Hughes, Crampton and Co. in Cheapside in the City of London bought an existing brickyard out on Ditchling Common, now a mixed business site called the Ditchling Common Industrial estate. Brick and tile making had gradually developed around that site since the late 1700s. It had been in the hands of George Chinnery, who had presumably retired after 20 years as manager, aged 64, in 1871.  The manufacture of terra cotta products then continued under Henry Johnson, as manager.

In 1875, however, on the east side of Junction Road north of the Lewes branch line, Sampson Copestake bought an additional swathe of clay land called Cants and Inholmes Farms, lying partly in Keymer and partly in Ditchling. It had accommodated small-scale brickmaking in the 18^th century, approximately where the modern road, The Vineries, meets Cants Lane. The steep embankments on the north side of Cants Lane, as it rises the hill, derive from clay excavation at that time. Copestake  then leased them to Henry Johnson who, with his partner Benjamin Stuart, developed the works on a very large scale, known as Johnson and Co. and employing some 300 people.

By the 1870s several new works had sprung up in various parts of the town as far north as Mill Road and east of the Railway along Junction Road and near Wivelsfield Station. Their O.S. grid ref, locations and a brief history are given by the late Molly Beswick in her epic study, published in 1993, Brickmaking in Sussex: a history and Gazeteer. But by the 1890s most of them had closed. Perhaps the chief reason for their closure was that each had a smallish, constricted site. They were outclassed by the new Keymer Junction works (later known as the Keymer Brick and Tile Company), since it had become operational.

The more-modern techniques that this large new company used in brickmaking considerably increased output relative to costs. These works had vast clay resources, whereas the older town centre potteries, by the last quarter of the 19^th century, had to import clay by horse-drawn wagons from numerous distant pits, in order to maintain levels of production. By this time large quantities of manufactured clay products, surplus to local requirements, were being transported by road and rail to other developing localities and sold to speculating builders. Residential development continued locally at a rate consistent with brick production. Between 1841 and 1871 the housing stock in Keymer parish (east of the London Road) had risen from around 200 to almost 500 and the trend continued upwards. The Meeds yard continued to compete with the best, as is evidenced by four surviving ledgers, from 1890 to 1916, which are a high priority source for anyone wanting to do new research on the firm. Their customers ranged from building firms such as Longleys of Crawley and South and Son of Brighton (paving slabs, chimney pots and ‘hard kiln’ bricks), to local residents F. Champion of Hilgay and Dr. Moore of The Oaks in Keymer Road (flower pots and crocks etc.). See notes below.

At Keymer Brick and Tile, production was on such a vast scale that the Lewes branch railway line ran a siding into the works. This facilitated transportation of coal into the works and enabled the finished brick and tile to be taken down to Eastbourne and other developing South Coast towns. A further development included the building of cottages for employees, a school house, situated where Wyvern Way enters Cants Lane today.  Opposite the school house site, the row of Victorian cottages on the west side of St. Andrews Road mark the curve of the old siding. 

In April 1883, however, because of a landlord and tenant dispute, concerning rent and royalties, the entire stock of products at Keymer Junction were sold by auction, followed by a similar sale at the Ditchling Common Potteries. The works then remained derelict and in May 1884 a disastrous fire destroyed much of the complex, causing some £10,000 to £15,000 worth of damage.  It transpired that the fire was caused by three boys who set alight some oil in one of the sheds but were unable to extinguish the flames or control the blaze. Although fire engines were called in from surrounding districts, including Brighton to help the local brigade, it was impossible to save anything and the buildings were left in ruins. Despite this catastrophe, the works were rebuilt sometime later, on a small scale at first but developing gradually.  They eventually became the property of ‘The Keymer Brick and Tile Company’.

This company, which remained in business until December 2014 for the production of ‘Keymer hand-made tiles’, had survived through the use of modern kilns and equipment. It had thirteen large kilns, each with separate chimney shafts. These included three double-domed kilns each capable of holding 200,000 bricks and one gigantic kiln consisting of 23 chambers ranged in a row, with a capacity for 450,000 bricks. Additionally, there were pug mills, drying sheds some 30 yards wide by 100 yards long and a two-storey moulding-shed for brick and terra cotta, which also housed machinery and was 30 yards wide by 80 yards long.

In 1883, when the works closed down, the stock was auctioned and the catalogue produced for the sale illuminates the great range of wares that the firm could produce. There was a large assortment of plain and shaped building and paving bricks, roofing tiles, balustrading, cornices, copings and cappings, window heads, finials, terminals, bosses, grotesques, cantilevers, chimney pots and drain pipes.

The following images show aspects of the works: first, the kilns and sheds, second, one of the workers and third the pits with the clay conveyer.

Wynnstay, the large mansion at the junction of Keymer Parade and Keymer Road (demolished in the late 1970s) was the first local residence of Sampson Copestake, the founder of the works. It was terracotta-faced on the road side, with spacious grounds and fine views on the south west side of the hill.  The block of flats of the same name stands there today. His main residence later became Inholmes Mansion, the grand new house he commissioned in the Ditchling part of the Estate at the old ‘Inholmes Farm’ site. It lay just off the top of the hill east of the right-angle junction of Cants Lane and Kings Way. There was, however, no suitable access to it for horse and carriage, so he built a completely new road from the north east flank of the hill at Burgess Hill, called now, as then, Inholmes Park Road. His final flourish was to construct a completely new bridge over the railway to Lewes. This has since been demolished but the recently-built Kings Way crosses the line by a new road bridge a short distance south east of Copestake’s earlier one. Inholmes mansion was demolished in the 1980s but the core of the site was only developed for housing from around 2019. Local people had enjoyed blackberry picking there, in the old orchards, for many years. The enormous claypits of the former works over the past few years (1920-1923) have now been developed as a large housing complex with convenience shops, a leisure area and a community hall.

Henry Johnson’s new residence, once he had moved to Burgess Hill, was ‘The Lawns’ in Keymer Road, later part of the Burgess Hill School for Girls.  Johnson himself moved away to Fareham in Hampshire after the fire at the works and died shortly after, leaving a widow and nine children.

The other, earlier-established local brick and tile works who were still in business produced brown ware, flower pots, plant troughs and bowls, rhubarb pots, sea kale pots, seed pans, ornamental terra cotta, wall panels and plaques and a certain amount of glazed pottery ware.

Many of the buildings in Burgess Hill and other local towns in Sussex incorporate Burgess Hill terracotta. Some buildings such as the old Hove Town Hall (sadly demolished), the Princess Alexandra Children’s’ hospital in Brighton (1880) were entirely constructed by products from the former ‘Keymer Junction’ works. Our two main churches, St John the Evangelist and St. Andrew’s are built of local brick. The internal walls of the latter are boldly faced in local terracotta. We also know, from records of the other local brickmakers that Burgess Hill’s products went to London, and abroad and north as far as Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle. Future research might even be able to identify which Victorian buildings in Seaford, Eastbourne and further east depended upon the products loaded into the trains in the old Keymer Junction railway sidings. Much remains to be discovered about the scope and the reach of Burgess Hill’s most prestigious brick and tile history.

The following images show: First, brickyard cottages, formerly adjacent to the incoming railway track, now in St Andrew’s Road, second, Inholmes mansion and third, the former view down Nye Road.

For more details on the Norman family go to the Notable People page.

For further reading, see also, J. M. Baines and Judith Fisher, Sussex Pottery (Fisher Publications, 1980) in which Burgess Hill’s link with the Chailey potters is illustrated; and see Fred’ Avery’s further work on the Keymer Brick and Tile Co., Occasional Paper no. 3, (Burgess Hill Local History Society, 2011).* This contains fuller information about the works than has been published here.* Now BH Heritage and History Association.

A reproduction of a copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford of: Burgess Hill as a Health Resort, (Jn. Beal & Co., Brighton, 1888) by Thomas F.I. Blaker of Avonhurst, BH., can be purchased on line. It has been given an inappropriate front cover image!

The examples given are from four Meeds sales and customer ledgers, 1892-1921, at WSRO at Chichester (ref. Add Mss 19642-19645). They were noted as part of brief sample notes of source for Burgess Hill research there. They contain many further details of their products and customers – hopefully a rewarding research project for someone in the future!