A bleach croft or green was a field over which freshly woven grey cloth, which had been washed in acidic liquor such as sour milk in the adjacent boiling sheds, was spread out and regularly turned to be bleached by the sunlight. Nightwatchmen, mantraps or spring guns were used to protect the cloth from theft. An ample supply of water was needed for washing the cloth and so bleach crofts were located adjacent to streams and rivers. Such fields surrounded early bleach and dye works but were dispensed with when chemical bleaching was introduced at beginning of C19 (William Jones 1996, Dictionary of Industrial Archaeology).

The smithy or forge was the workplace of a blacksmith or ironsmith, where iron was worked into useful objects such as weapons, armour in the Middle Ages and locks, hinges, spades and tools, iron horseshoes (machine-made horseshoes were introduced from USA in 1870s), grilles, gates, railings, metal parts for locomotives, coaches, waggons and carts. The blacksmith's raw material was wrought iron in bar form. The smithy comprised a hearth, bellows, anvil and bosh (quenching trough). A small forge had hand-operated bellows, a large industrial forge water-powered bellows, power hammer and shears (William Jones, 1996, Dictionary of Industrial Archaeology).

A large edge-runner stone was found to survive on the brickworks site during excavations in 1982. It was suggested that this should be rescued and retained as evidence of clay milling in the valley {2}. Little remains of the lower works today but there are remains of arches etc under the bridge which carries Stella Road over the Burn. Joseph Cowen was introduced to brickmaking by his brother in law Anthony Forster, Fire Brick maker, and took over the Blaydon Burn pit and works c. 1819. By 1858 the firm had established the Low Works, between Path Head and Blaydon Bridge (Figures 21 and 22). At the Milner Pit/yard, two Newcastle kilns were used to produce gas retorts. A little further north, at the Low Works proper, 11 Newcastle kilns were in operation firing firebricks.

By agreement with the landowner, P.E.Townley, on the 1 January 1841, Cowen paid £50 p.a for the right to work 3,000 tons of fireclay in the Stella Freehold Royalty, with an additional charge on productivity of 41/2 d.. Per ton. The ton was defined as 21 cwt at 120lbs per cwt (normally 112lbs to a hundredweight and 20cwt to a ton) the excess being to cover wastage in handling and impurities in the clay. This was a high rental compared with that charged by George Silvertop for the adjoining mineral rights: GH Ramsay for Blaydon Main and Messrs Milner for Dockendale were paying £20 p.a and 4 ½ d per ton. [Davidson 145]. Priestman Collieries Ltd took over the works in 1900 but continued to use the name ‘Cowen’ on their bricks [Davidson 145.].

Most of the fireclay came from the Mary and Betsy drift, where it was left to ‘weather’ before being packed into 10-ton trucks and taken to the Low Works by railway. At the yard it was put into a ‘Durham’ grinding mill, them mixed in an upper and lower pug mill. Just before the First World War there were 15 hand-moulders at the High and Low Yards: a good hand-moulder could make as many as 2,400 bricks a day

In 1919 the 12 Newcastle kilns were demolished and a 24-chamber Belgian kiln built on the site (Figure 23), which is shown on the 4th edition OS of 1940. The remaining 11 Newcastle kilns were retained for burning high refractory silica bricks and hand-moulded fireclay lumps. In 1926 a Bradley and Craven brick machine was installed which pressed 1200 bricks per hour - these bricks were stamped COWEN M. Export bricks were stamped COWEN M ENGLAND, and those for France and Belgium were marked COWEN GV, after their distributor/agent George Vantroin. In the 1930s the works were employing 80 people, and working two shifts.

By 1955 export orders had ceased, and the yard began to make common building bricks, though three Newcastle kilns remained burning a small number of firebricks until 1967. The works finally closed in 1975, and were extensively reclaimed and remediated in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There are virtually no surface traces remain (Plate 91), though a section of firebrick wall lies beside the modern path.