Stories to tell

Column by Fordingbridge Museum is sponsored by Adrian Dowding

By Julian Hewitt, Fordingbridge Museum

In my experience, often, people who you may pass in the street without a second glance have interesting stories to tell about their lives.

I came across two examples of this recently. One was a lady who regularly met the late Queen because of her husband’s job and another was a gentleman who had been taught by the author William Golding and had been friends with his son. Others may have more local memories about activities now consigned to the history books.

One such example is Margaret Bailey. She was a teacher who lived most of her life in Sandleheath and her relatives played a leading part in the brickmaking industry in the village.

Margaret’s relatives had been potters and workers in clay since the 18th century, centred on the rich deposit of London Clay that runs from Sandleheath through Verwood to Wimborne. Apart from her own memories of being brought up on one of the five brickworks operating in Sandleheath, her father, Robert Read, had the remarkable foresight to leave copious notes and tape recordings detailing the day-to-day running of the brickworks. Armed with this information and her own research, she was able to write a book titled ‘My Ancestors were Moulders of Clay’, that gives an anecdotal and factual insight into what was once a major local industry.

The book gives many details that would otherwise be lost. Bricks were, in the early days, transported round the area by horse and cart. Later, traction engines were used to pull three wagons each containing 3,000 bricks. These could go further afield. Many of the housing estates in rapidly expanding Bournemouth were built using these bricks. Later still, in the 1920s, lorries, subject to a 12mph speed limit and powered by petrol costing one shilling and seven pence a gallon, were used to transport the bricks. The coming of the railways made a huge difference both by importing coal to replace the wood that originally fired the kilns but also to deliver bricks to a much wider area.

Sandleheath bricks were sent to Bournemouth, Salisbury, Weymouth and London as well as to the Isle of Wight and Guernsey. Clay for the day’s work would be ‘pecked’ down from the pile of excavated material and then ‘tempered’ or kneaded by the bare feet of workers. After 1908, a horse was used for this process and when electricity arrived in the village in 1938, an electric ‘Pug Mill’ was installed to temper the clay.

Margaret goes into fascinating detail about the production process and how it developed with the introduction of new technology. She also gives interesting details about the lives of the workers, who earned roughly twice as much as agricultural workers in the early days but were also on piece work, meaning that they only took short breaks. Before 1914, three quarters of the workforce were laid off in the winter months and had to find other work. Some workers suffered from respiratory illnesses caused by the pungent sulphur fumes from the kilns. These fumes killed off the trees in the immediate area and caused concerns amongst local people about pollution. She tells us that the average brickmaker could produce 100 bricks an hour and how the range of different coloured bricks came about.

If readers have any interesting memories to relate, I would encourage them to write them down. They will find this a therapeutic activity that will entertain and inform future generations and often provide vital information for researchers.

Fordingbridge Museum would be grateful to receive copies of such memories and would store them carefully in their collection. Margaret Bailey’s fascinating book is available from the museum in return for a donation to museum funds.