Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
the latter in handling them to prevent losing a prepared arris. This was par-
ticularly true of TLB 'seconds' that were sold too.
According to Dumbleton (1990, 7):
The firm claimed to have made bricks since 1860, and in 1886 gained the only
gold medal for bricks at the Architectural and Building Trades Exhibition. Their
circular of 1893 shows that by then they had works at Swinley, Easthampstead,
Warfield and Pinewood making 12 million bricks a year.
TLB rubbers were made at two of several brickyards Lawrence operated on
the geological junction between the Bagshot sand-seam and London clay.
The main yard was the Warfield Brickworks, the second - evidently only
in production to meet demand between 1891-1910 - was at their Pinewood
works.
Dumbleton (1990, 14) describes how the rubbers were made from a Swinley
Clay at Warfield:
Rubber bricks. Special clay from Swinley was mixed with water in a wash mill, a
cylindrical tank with radial rotating rakes. The slurry, free from any stones, then
flowed down a wooden sluice, through screens to remove roots and other debris,
and into the settling ponds called rubber bays. After some months the clay was
dry enough for use. The rubber bricks were made like ordinary bricks, in steel-
lined 9, 12 or 14 inch moulds, but had no frogs and were stamped T.L.B. with a
hand stamp.
In 1988 Walter Spencer, then 93 years old, wrote a personal account for the
British Brick Society of his father's long years working at the Swinley yard for
Thomas Lawrence Spencer (Spencer, 1988, 20-22):
(Jan 1) … I thought that you might be interested in some facts relating to the old
brickyard owned by Thomas Lawrence ….
T L B bricks were famed in their day, and the 'Rubbers', a slightly bigger and bet-
ter quality brick, were used to build the forts outside Portsmouth Harbour ….
…Another brick yard was opened about half a mile from the old yard, on
discovering that more 'Clay Bays' had been found with clay of a much more
refined quality. The yard was called 'Klondyke' and the celebrated TLB RUBBER
was produced here. These were slightly larger bricks and were more smoothed
faced.
…The site of the Brick Yard is now entirely obliterated and except for the undu-
lations of the 'clay bays' cannot be traced. It was situated on the left of the Ascot
to Bagshot road just before the gradient to Tower Hill commences and covered
over a square mile of land….
