The chimney of Baggeridge Brickworks

The brick works at Baggeridge in Sedgley were once part of the Earl of Dudley's Baggeridge Colliery Ltd, producing bricks as a by-product of the mine in 1936. The bricks were manufactured using local Etruria Marl clay from a nearby quarry, and colliery shale. This brick-making enterprise was so sucessful that Baggeridge Brick was made a separate company in 1944. As a new company, it concentrated on producing bricks for the re-building projects that sprang up after the Second World War (1939-1945). The first kiln - a Super Staffordshire continuous kiln - was built in 1956, with a further two continuous kilns added over the following two years. During the 1960s and '70s the company went through significant changes and achieved great success. One of the biggest changes came in 1968 when the colliery closed and clay was obtained from a clay pit at nearby Himley. The absence of colliery shale in the manufacturing process caused the bricks to be fired at a higher temperature, producing a much higher quality red engineering brick. The three Super Staffordshire kilns were replaced by rectangular downdraught intermittent kilns in 1978. Since the mid-1980s, there has been a continuous programme of development work specialising in the manufacture of Staffordshire blue bricks. Today (2007), the factory produces facing and engineering bricks, special shaped bricks, paver systems and sculptured bricks, and is still the UK's leading independent brickmaker.