LONDON BRICK COMPANY

The London Brick Company of Stewartby and Peterborough has served the building industry by rail and by road. This second, fully revised edition from Nostalgia Road celebrates the company's history. The guide shares the company's growth, its acquisitions and its delivery service as well as details on the brick-making process. The book explores how the firm emerged from a series of acquisitions of different brick-making firms from the 1880s until a new company emerged as the London Brick Company Ltd. in 1936. It shares how the company grew to become the major producer of bricks in the country and the biggest brick company in the world. Learn how the organisation was well ahead in social thinking by offering better conditions and higher pay levels for their staff in accord with their philanthropic ideals which were similar to the Quakers and the Cadbury family. Discover how, in 1974, the firm bought Whittlesey as the clay reserves in the Peterborough area could be better managed under the control of one company rather than multiple. The book also offers insight into how elite the firm was, highlighting that one of the biggest benefits of the semi-dry brick industry, as typified by the London Brick Company, was the fact that huge quantities of bricks could be produced cheaply by use of the continuous kiln. There are also fantastic images to bring the company's history to life, including a landscape shot of the horse and rail transport at the company's No.2 yard near Peterborough in the late 1800s and a photograph of a London Brick Company vehicle called the Foden DG6 which was a 6-wheeler similar to the brick vehicles requisitioned by the Ministry of Supply in the Second World War. Paperback, 8" x 8.3", colour and black and white images, 52pp.