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Midhurst Brickworks is a former brickworks situated to the south-west of Midhurst, West Sussex in England. The works were sited close to the (now closed) Midhurst Common railway station on the Midhurst to Petersfield (L.S.W.R.) railway line. The works were established in 1913, on land owned by the Cowdray Estate, and closed in 1985. From 1938, the company traded as ''Midhurst Whites'' after their main product, white bricks made of sand and lime, which was obtained from the Cocking Lime Works, south. ==History== The works were established in 1913 by S. Pearson & Son, a firm controlled by the Cowdray family, on land owned by Lord Cowdray. S. Pearson & Son traded as public works engineers and had been involved in the construction of Dover Docks, the Blackwall Tunnel, the East River Tunnels in New York and Vera Cruz Docks in Mexico. Initially, sand for the bricks was extracted from a sand pit close to the works on Midhurst Common. Following the First World War, the brickworks were closed until, in 1925, the works were sold to Robert Dunning and Eli Searle, who had acquired the Cocking Lime Works the previous year. Dunning was a brick-maker from Wales, who upgraded the plant at Midhurst and Cocking, enabling the lime works to produce a fine ground lime for use in brick-making. In 1926, the brickworks and lime works, now trading as the Midhurst Brick & Lime Co. Ltd., were acquired by Benjamin Cloke for £6,000. Cloke embarked on a major expansion programme, both at Cocking and Midhurst. At the brickworks, a high chimney was erected and £30,000 was spent on new plant, including an excavator and locomotive, two Sutcliffe Duplex brick presses, two new 160 psi autoclaves and a Lancashire boiler. Cloke had hoped to acquire a contract to supply bricks to London County Council but the contract failed to mature and eventually Cloke was forced to sell off a stock of 4 million bricks made especially for the expected London contract to a local builder for £1 per 1000; these were used in the construction of new homes at Park Crescent in Midhurst. The company now concentrated on the manufacture of sand-lime bricks, in which damp sand and slaked lime (8% of the content) were mixed before being poured into moulds and heated under pressure in an autoclave. The autoclaves were about in diameter and long with a railway track built in to enable the bricks to be inserted into the autoclave on a bogie wagon. The fine-ground lime came from the lime works at Cocking. In 1935, Cloke introduced the Midhurst White facing brick, as a cheap substitute for glazed brick especially for internal areas. He embarked on an extensive advertising programme, spending £3,000, offering the new white bricks at £5 per thousand against £30 for the traditional glazed bricks. The advertisement claimed that "the texture resists the chemical erosion of atmospheric acids and gives no hold for smoky deposits. Midhurst Whites remain fresh and beautiful—giving back the sunlight year after year."〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/36844288@N00/4739184664/ )〕 The company was soon highly profitable, generating a weekly profit in excess of £1,000 and the company was renamed as ''Midhurst Whites'' in 1938. At the same time, Benjamin Cloke decided on a flotation of the company's shares. This was not a success, but fortunately Cloke had retained a substantial holding of the company's shares, thus preventing the flotation from being a failure. Shortly after this, Cloke died from thrombosis. To handle the expanded production, new storage sheds were erected close to the railway station, with Southern Railway providing 150 special truck containers to transport the bricks without further handling. Production continued throughout World War II, with the company acquiring War Office contracts, including Thorney Island RAF Station. By 1945, the company had a stockpile of 8 million bricks. Following the closure of the railway in 1964, transport switched to the road. At the same time, the company expanded the works, crossing over the former railbed to open a new sand pit.〔 The works was closed in 1985. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Midhurst Brickworks」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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