Vintage Films
I have gathered a selection of vintage films that I believe will be of great interest, especially to those who are too young ever to have seen the brick industry in full operation. These films preserve scenes that have now disappeared: smoke rising from the chimneys, men walking or cycling to work, and London Brick Company lorries leaving the works loaded with bricks for sites across the country. They also show the wider life of the village, including the sporting and social facilities provided by the London Brick Company, which played such an important part in community life. Although the films cannot be played directly on this website, I have included links so that you can watch them on the original hosting sites.
Website – British Film Industry
Title of film “Making of Bricks”
Documentary made in 1938
Watch Making of Bricks online - BFI Player
19 minutes long, filmed in Norfolk and Stewartby
Making of Bricks is a wonderful film and although it was filmed in 1938, so many of the scenes feel deeply familiar to me, even though I was not born until 1959. The glimpses of the knothole, the brickworks, the village and the sporting facilities bring back a flood of memories, as if I were stepping straight in to the world I grew up in.
The film opens in Runton, Norfolk, with scenes of bricks being made entirely by hand. From four minutes forty four seconds, it moves to Stewartby and its brickworks, showing men walking and cycling to their shifts. The camera follows the machinery digging clay from the knothole, which was flooded in the 1950s and is now Stewartby Lake. It explains how the clay was handled, with wagons carrying it into the works before it was pressed into green bricks. Workers lift each brick by hand and stack them onto trams bound for the kilns. Once a kiln is filled, the entrance is sealed. The next scenes show the fired bricks being removed from the chambers, followed by glimpses inside the research laboratories where men test the finished products.
Bricks are then loaded into railway wagons or onto LBC lorries. The film widens out to village life, showing Stewartby’s fire brigade and ambulance depots, men playing cricket and bowls, and swimmers diving into the village pool. Inside Stewartby Club men play darts, dominoes, and gather around a piano. The piece ends with badminton being played in the village hall and families waiting on the platform at Stewartby railway station for the train.
Website – East Anglian Film Archives
Title of film “Phorpres Lorries”
Taken about 1960 - Stewartby - Catalogue No. 1357
Phorpres Lorries (1960) | East Anglian Film Archive
2:30 minutes long – silent colour film
The film opens with a convoy of London Brick Company lorries travelling down Ampthill Hill on the B530.
The scene then shifts to the vehicle emerging from the brickworks entrance and passing the Bedford District Office (BDO), a building that still stands today. From there, the lorry continues along Stewartby Way, part of the model village created for the London Brick Company workforce. One of the company gardeners can even be seen mowing the lawns in front of the houses.
The lorry is next shown approaching the roundabout opposite Montgomery Close in Stewartby, with Stewartby Senior School and the brickwork chimneys visible in the background. The lorry continues on Stewartby Way. The journey then continues along the B530, the Bedford to Ampthill Road, heading towards Ampthill and passing the turning to Houghton Conquest. The following scene shows the lorry slowly climbing Ampthill Hill.
Then the same lorry is filmed travelling down Ampthill Hill. A little later, a single Phorpres lorry is shown making its way up Ampthill Hill, close to the top of the hill.
The film concludes with a convoy of London Brick Company lorries travelling down Ampthill Hill on the B530 once again, but this time heading towards Bedford rather than Ampthill. The lead vehicle in the convoy carries the registration YNM 970.
YouTube
Forterra Building Products Ltd.
London Brick - A History To Be Proud Of | Forterra
2:36 minutes
London Brick Company’s archivist, Andrew Mortlock, talks about the company’s history. The bricks, now produced by Forterra Building Products Ltd, are still made today and the film shows them travelling along conveyor belts and handled by robots, work that was once done entirely by hand.
YouTube
Julian Clode
19:41 minutes
This film shows working life in Stewartby and Kempston Hardwick, beginning in one of the knotholes before moving into the brickworks. It includes views of the kiln openings and them being sealed with a wicket. You see a man positioned on top of the kiln adding old dust (smudge) through holes in the roof of the kiln. Inside the works, bricks are moved by hand and along conveyor belts, while forklift trucks carry bricks around the site. Lorries are seen leaving the brickworks. The film includes a view of Stewartby Way from the green in front of Stewartby Senior School, followed by a view of the Bedford District Office (BDO), which still stands today.
YouTube
Part of the project “The Journey from Bunyan to the Brickworks” by John Bunyan Museum and Bedford Chronicles 2017
Bedford’s Got History
The Journey From Bunyan To The Brickworks - The Stories
11:07 minutes
Interviews with old employees of the brickworks, including many from different countries who travelled to England for a better life.