Northumberland - Throckley works

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 19th Year

Issue

Issue No.

10

Date Released

Jun 1966

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1County Durham - Cliff Bottom
2. 2Tom McGuinness
3. 3Merseyside - Fashion City
4. 4Northumberland - Throckley works

Story

Story No. within this Issue

4 / 4

Summary

BFI synopsis: A new NCB brick-factory equipped with the latest automatic machinery is turning out nearly half a million bricks a week. Open-cast extraction of shale and clay (various views of the drag line shown). View of brick factory in background. The stages of brick manufacture are shown. Grab drops shale into large container - crusher where the clay is ground and mixed with water; column of clay (square shaped) pressed out and then cut into brick sizes; bricks travel along machinery; placed in drier then removed by fork lift truck to kiln; scenes inside the kiln. The old brick works. An old brick kiln is shown and how the brick were hand stacked. Completed bricks. Examples of modern architecture using the bricks (building not identified) - large may-storied glass and concrete buildings; people walking past them.
NCB Commentary - This gigantic walking drag line is clearing away the topsoil at an opencast site not far from Throckley, near Newcastle.
The bucket is big enough to hold a car - like most opencast mines this one is bing filled in and restored as mining goes on.
Shale and clay from this topsoil are the ingredients of one of the oldest recipes in the world - to be baked into bricks. To meet rising demand the National Coal Board, already the nation’s third largest producer of bricks, is stepping up output with the latest automatic production techniques. This new factory, at Throckley, will turn out nearly half a million bricks a week.
Shale flow into the crusher, where it is finely ground.
Blended and mixed with water - the result is a continuously extruded column of clay - just waiting for the cutter.
The bricks are sanded to improve their appearance.
They travel on in perfect order like soldiers - prodded here and there by automatic sergeant majors.
In batches of 720 at a time they enter one of the eight drying ovens, each holding 20,000 bricks. A strict time table has to be observed. After 24 hours a stacker removes them and whisks them along the road to the kilns. Few men work at Throckley, but those that do have key jobs, and very high productivity.
Warm air for the drying chambers comes from these two heaters, the fuel being monorailed into hoppers.
In the kiln, trickle feed stokers maintain a temperature of over 1000 degrees centigrade. The burning coal falls freely between the stacked pattern of bricks. The bricks move in on their 4 day journey through the 150 yard kilns.
Not long ago, the site was occupied by an old-type, traditionally operated brickworks. Here, each batch had to be carefully stacked in the kilns by hand - brick by brick.
The new works has changed all this.
The evenly baked batches of bricks leave the kilns as another trolley load enters. Then they are stored, ready to be sent out to the trade.
From the new Throckley factory, bricks by the million flow out to take their place in the new buildings of all kinds which are rising into the skyline of Britain in the 60’s.

Keywords

Buildings and structures; Industry and manufacture; Mining

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases   Used for synopsis
The National Archives COAL 32   /13 Scripts for Mining Review, 1960-1963

Credits:

Sponsor

National Coal Board

Production Co.

National Coal Board Film Unit