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Euston Estate Brickworks
"Rumour has it that brickearth (a portmanteau term) was quarried here as early as the eighteenth century.
So perhaps more than 150 years of brickmaking are unrecorded.
(Peter Hoare "From Brickearths, to Bricks, to Palaeolithic Archaeology" June, 2019, Pathways to Ancient Britain website)
Before the Barnham brickworks became the main source of bricks on the Euston Estate, the kilns now discovered at Wash Pits Field to the south of Euston Park, may have been the earliest brick making site here.
SCCAS Report number 2014/063 by Rob Brooks describes the excavations carried out in advance of the construction of a farm reservoir in a grassland field 1.7 miles SE of Euston Hall. Fieldwork was from 6th May to 19th June, 2014.
The 1903 revised OS Survey shows no features in the field at all, so I have annotated the approximate site with "Wash Pit Field".
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Excavations revealed two kilns on the Wash Pits Field site. The oldest of the two was dated to the 16th and 17th centuries, and measured 7.35 m by 3.9 m. The Rokewood family owned the manor from 1458 to around 1650, and heavily rebuilt the Hall in the Elizabethan period (1558-1603). In 1664 Lord Arlington acquired the house, and a new round of re-modelling and enlargement took place. |
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The second kiln lays to the north of the older one, and dates to the 18th/19th century, and is the larger of the two.
Further renovations to the house took place between 1750 and 1756, including new brick facades.
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Pathways to Ancient Britain website
Page created on 24th December, 2023
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