tarboat's photos with the keyword: berry hill

This one was found by Tim Lawton in Newcastle-under-Lyme on the old Jubilee Baths site after demolition. It is a product of the Berry Hill Brickworks in Stoke-on-Trent although none of us had heard of this particular registered trade mark before. I have checked in my list of trade marks and Beryl was certainly one used by Berry Hill Collieries Ltd in the 1930s.

A friend called today with a small gift as he knows I am interested in bricks, especially those from North Staffordshire. This tiny special brick with a really deep frog (more than half the depth of the brick) was made as a souvenir of the visit to the works by William Hancock, the Lord Mayor of Stoke-on-Trent 1961-62. It is inscribed on the side of the brick: William Hancock Lord Mayor 1962 I wonder whether it was intended to be used as an ashtray?

John Slater purchased the Berry Hill Collieries after 1914 and in 1918 set up John Slater Ltd to operate Berry Hill and New Haden (Cheadle) Collieries. The brickworks at Berry Hill came as part of the deal and I wonder how pleased Mr Slater was with the misunderstanding regarding the stamps for the brick press. :-)

A bit of a mystery behind this brick as I have been unable to identify the location of the brickworks or even the correct name of the company. Bricks of this sort lettered 'P B Co Ltd' and with a further letter(s), 'A C' in this case, are very common across North Staffordshire and south-east Cheshire. The sheer numbers suggest a substantial operation, so does anyone know who and where? Answer finally provided through great research by Capitol 203 who found a list of brickworks made in 1943 by the Ministry of Supply. This makes it clear that the Potteries Brick Co. Ltd acted as a selling agent for at least eleven brick companies in the area. The assumption is that each brickworks used a different letter on their bricks, but all stamped them with the PB Co label. The works involved in 1943 were: Beans Brick & Marl Co, Tunstall Berry Hill Brickworks Ltd, Fenton & Cheadle Birchenwood Brick & Tile Co Ltd, Kidsgrove Cobridge Brick & Marl Co. Ltd, Cobridge D. Duddell, Fenton J. Hewitt & Son (Fenton) Ltd, Fenton Low J. Leigh & Sons, Burslem Wm. Palmer, Exors of, Cobridge Sneyd Collieries Ltd, Burslem The Stafford Coal & Iron Co. Ltd, Great Fenton Thos. W. Ward Ltd, Apedale, Chesterton Further information received suggests that the code A C refers to Berry Hill, Clanway Works.

The Berry Hill Brickworks was situated adjacent to Berry Hill Colliery between Fenton and Hanley in North Staffordshire. By the 1870s bricks were being manufactured by the colliery owner William Bowers and production continued into the 1970s in the hands of Berry Hill Brickworks Ltd. This particular example was manufactured at Kingsley near Cheadle (Staffs) at a brickworks absorbed by the Berry Hill company.