Crossley’s yard, 1960-1986. Built by Messrs Crossley Building Products Ltd in 1960 and designed to produce 450,000 common and facing bricks per week. Bricks burned in an 18-chamber transverse-arch continuous kiln, each chamber holding 53,000 bricks. Another transverse-arch kiln began operating in 1965 (Number 2 Kiln), built by Boiler Settings Ltd of Bolton. Brick production doubled to 900,000 bricks per week, with 160 people employed there. Number 1 kiln has become disused (1980s) and workforce halved. Besides the works is an estimated 90-year reserve of blue-grey clay. Clay is obtained by means of a scraper, which deposits clay close to the mill. A mechanical shovel carries the clay to two box feeders and by conveyor belts into two wet-grinding pans; then through two crushing rollers; and then by conveyor belts to two brick machines (de-airing). Grog is prepared in a dry-grinding pan and mixed with the wet clay. A machine was first developed here to produce a rustic-ripple brick. The brick machines have automatic cutting-off tables, from where the bricks are mechanically lifted onto drying cars and conveyed along tram lines to the two drying chambers. Hot air is drawn from the kiln and blown through the bricks in the dryers. The dried bricks are stacked by hand onto pallets and set in the kiln with a forklift truck. After burning, the bricks are hand-graded into various classes and colours. In 1972, natural gas replaced coal in firing the kiln. However, since 1982, one-inch nugget coal has been used to fire part of the kiln.

Manufacturer in 1908, Springwell Brick Company
1908, disused in 1921

Manufacturer in 1897-1938
Cochrane’s yard, 1896-1940

Brickfield 1861
Manufacturer in 1926-1966 was Usworth Bricks Ltd
A new brickyard was established in 1926 at Usworth Colliery, when two Belgian continuous kilns were built and connected to a 130-feet high chimney. The brickworks closed in 1966, but from 1967-71 foam-slag cement blocks were made here.

Edwardian post office. Half timbered gable, robust original windows, door and shopfront.

Manufacturer in 1908 J Cook and Sons; 1908-1966. The Kellett family had a brickyard at the ironworks in 1950, at which time four new kilns were built, making in all a total of ten Newcastle kilns at the yard. Wire-cut bricks were made here until the yard closed in 1966.

1879-1939 Kellet’s yard
1879-1897, manufacturer Birleson, Todd and Compnay
1908-1925, manufacturer Allison, English and Company
1934-1985, manufacturer Birtley Brick Company
In 1908, the works comprised two office buildings, stable, seven kilns (each 20ft long by 15 feet wide by 9feet high); three steam drying sheds with cast iron floor plates, a modern Lancashire boiler, a horizontal engine, a Porter’s double pugmill, and cutting table, a feed pump, a cold water pump, two Pulsometer pumps, an engine and grinding pan, and engine and fan for the brick dryer. The plant and kilns in the Union and Team Valley brickworks combined was thought capable of producing four million bricks per year.

1885-1897

1894, and Tyzack's yard 1875

1861