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Three Brickworks at Nowton or Welnetham or Sicklesmere
The sites of these pits and kilns are off the A134, Sudbury Road, between Bury St Edmunds and Sicklesmere.
A publication that helps to explain this concentration of Brickworks is "SCC Suffolk Landscape character - undulating arable landscape with parklands and ancient woodland."
"In the Hoxnian Interglacial there was a lake in a hollow on the surface of the Anglian till at Sicklesmere. The lacustrine clays that in filled it were exploited by a brick works in the 19th century while Roman kilns in the same area suggest an earlier exploitation of this resource."
This also means that these clays might contain evidence of early man, and John Wymer has suggested that four handaxes came from the Oakes clay pit, but exact provenance is not available.
The 1885/6 OS map illustrated here, clearly labels the area as Little Welnetham, but we do not acknowledge that name with the brickworks location.
The brickworks located on the map attached to this section have been variously described in official records as located at Little Welnetham, Sicklesmere and as Great Welnetham. One directory lists Andrews works at Rushbrooke.
All these parishes are closely linked and the boundaries may well have changed over the years.
From examination of the 1886 OS map attached it can be seen that there appears to be at least two, and probably three brickworks in an area labelled as Little Welnetham, which has no doubt added to the overall confusion.
The last of these three, which is examined on this page, is Alfred Andrew's brickworks at Sicklesmere.
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The second map shows the parish boundaries as they were around 1850 outlined in blue, with names also in blue. The red outline shows parish boundaries by 1996. The blue outline shows these three brickworks within the parish of Nowton, although the nearest settlement is the village of Sicklesmere. Sicklesmere has never been a parish in its own right. Today it is part of Great Welnetham parish. In the mid 19th century Sicklesmere was partly in Nowton and partly in Great Welnetham. |
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Alfred Andrews brickworks is shown on the OS 25 inch map from 1884. It no longer appears on the rivised issue of 1904.
Alfred Andrews had a brickworks at Eastgate Street in Bury St Edmunds from 1860 to 1886. The bricks are marked ‘A.ANDREWS BURY’ in the frog. Alfred Andrews also had a works at Sicklesmere, to the south of Bury St Edmunds, producing red bricks and to identify them from the Bury production these were marked ‘A.A’ in the frog. Photographs of samples of these bricks have so far eluded me. But Bill Blowers presumably reported this fact to Graeme Perry who included it in the British Brick Society Information Leaflet 126 for April 2014. Alfred Andrews was a builder and surveyor who claimed in a court case that he had been making bricks and tiles since 1865. He was also at one period an undertaker, which was quite usual for builders at this time.
The Post Office directory for 1869 lists him as "builder, surveyor, timber merchant and brick, tile and drain manufacturer; offices 61 and 62 (late 58) St John's Street; works, at Rushbrooke."
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British Brick Society newsletter "Information No 26", April 2014,
Website - David Kitching's website - Brick Section
Website - Martyn Fretwell's blog on bricks etc
Photos of bricks by Martyn Fretwell courtesy of Museum of East Anglian Life.
Page created on 21st August, 2023
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