The Colliery stable are beginning to take shape as the brick work continues to rapidly rise .

As mentioned in earlier posts, the building is a copy rather than a relocated building. This meant we had to find a suitable brick to construct the building with. Although red brick is more readily available we wanted to show an example of yellow bricks once common across the Durham Coal Field.

Brickwork with inset pannels

Many of the coal seams in the north east also contained a significant amount of clay. Rather than treating it as waste it was soon realised that the clay could be put to good use. From the mid 1800s many colliery companies began to construct their own brick work on the colliery sites. This provided a ready source of building materials for colliery buildings and the miles of terrace housed built for the miners and their families.

One of the most prolific producers of the yellow bricks was the Bankfoot Works of Pease and Partners in Crook.

A rather weathered ‘Pease’ brick

The varied clay colours can be seen in the Museum brick collection. These have been collected from across the north and several years ago included in a display in on of the museums tram stops. The picture at the top of this post shows a selection of them and the varied range of colours and shades they come in.

As can be seen from the photographs many of the brick are of cream and yellow shades. Unfortunately we could not find reclaimed bricks of these colours in sufficient quantities but we were lucky enough to find a batch of old stock in a brick works due for closure.

This building will be the first of our colliery buildings to show this, once common, brighter shade of colliery made bricks.

Window openings tacking shape

walls getting higher