Brick industry growth was built on Keighley's expansion

ON December 5, 1863, Thomas Broadley, a Keighley labourer, was convicted of manslaughter at the assize court in York.

He had been employed by the Park Brick Company at Low Bridge Brick Works, which was at the junction of Parkwood Street and Park Lane. His job was to supply Thomas Barran, a brick moulder, with clay. Barran, a widower with a small child to keep, was employed on piece rate, that is he was paid a fixed price for every ‘pallet’ of bricks that he produced regardless of the time that he put in. His wage was therefore dependent upon Broadley keeping him well supplied with clay.

During Tuesday, July 28, 1863, Barran had been castigating Broadley for being too slow in supplying him and had constantly verbally abused him with "very exciting language". As evening approached, Broadley tired of the repeated threats and abuse, rushed at Barran and struck him with a violent blow which knocked him to the ground. Barran fell unconscious and despite attempts to save him, died where he lay. An inquest was held at the White Swan Inn at Low Bridge. Broadley later served 15 months' hard labour for manslaughter.

The affray and death of Thomas Barran is one of the earliest records of a brick works in Keighley and the Park Brick Works was to become the most successful of several in the town. It was established in the 1850s to meet local demand as the town expanded. The clay was dug from a clay pit on the hillside at the rear of the works and barrowed down for processing. A horse-powered mill, known as a pug mill, mixed the clay with sand and water to produce the brick clay. When the right consistency had been achieved, the clay was extracted and delivered to the moulders in barrows.

Brick moulders worked at a bench, with a trough at one side containing the clay. A dollop of clay was pulled from the trough and pressed into a wooden mould and the surplus clay scraped off, and a new mould then taken up. A boy took the packed moulds and tipped the bricks out onto a wooden frame, where they were left to dry for a day. The bricks were then loaded into the kiln and stacked up in the form of a lattice with gaps for the heat to pass through. When the kiln was full, the open top was covered with planks and sealed with sods or clay waste. Fires were then lit at the base of the kiln and the hot embers pushed into it. The kiln manager oversaw the firing, which he carefully monitored. The firing was uneven, resulting in the bricks at the top of the kiln being softer than those at the bottom; those at the bottom that were nearest the heat were the hardest and known as fire bricks.

By 1873 the old kiln had been replaced by a new Hoffmann kiln that produced evenly-fired bricks. Designed in Germany in 1858 by Friedrich Hoffmann, it was completely enclosed and divided into small chambers. When the kiln was fired, hot gases passed through the chambers, drawn in by air rising through an adjacent chimney. A horizontal steam engine was also installed to power the pug mill, and new extrusion machinery that forced the clay through a die and automatically cut it into bricks.

When the clay pit behind the works was exhausted a new one was opened further up the hillside and linked to the works by a tram line. The business was so successful that a larger and improved Hoffmann kiln with a central chimney was built in about 1900.

The company closed in the late 1930s, ending brick manufacture in the town.