A new exhibition has opened at Radstock Museum, charting the history of brick and tile making in the Somerset Coalfield area.

The coal pits themselves were responsible for the start of the brick-making industry. Collieries sank their shafts through thick beds of clay; the clay was then used to make the bricks with which those mine shafts were then lined. The first brick chimneys built in the coalfield were often not for the pit engines, but to provide the draught for firing the brick-kilns.

The abundance of cheap stone in the region meant that bricks were little used for local building until the latter part of the nineteenth century. Even then their use was mostly restricted to door and window openings, and chimneystacks. Tier decorative potential was also exploited on more prestigious buildings.

The exhibition shows how bricks influenced local architecture, and many examples of locally made bricks and tiles are displayed, including a rare kiln-loader’s tally, an unfired tile on which the numbers of tiles loaded was etched with a pointed stick. It also tells the fascinating story of how the brickworks site at West Road, Welton 1924 – 1940 (where Long Barnaby and Beaufort Avenue Estates are now situated) was taken over by Blatchford Engineering during WWII.

Also on display is a rare piece of late Victorian horticultural pottery made at Temple Cloud. For more details, visit: www.radstockmuseum.co.uk