As a young boy I played in the farmer’s fields and quiet lanes around Slough. We heard stories about the old brick fields, the pits, and the canal kilns. Those memories prompted me to delve deeper into the town’s brickmaking past.
Walk along the Slough Arm canal and you can still feel it. The still water, the quiet banks, the faint whiff of old industry. For generations, bricks were the backbone of local growth in west London and the Thames Valley, and Slough sat in the middle of it. Local clay, good transport links, and steady demand turned modest fields into busy yards. The result shaped homes, schools, bridges, and streets we can still see today.
Here, I will set out the history of brickmaking in Slough. I’ll take you back to the early brickfields, the Victorian boom, key kilns and tools that were used and look in to who worked in the yards. I’ll be looking at the Slough brickworks that supplied London and beyond, and the role of the Slough Arm canal.
A much earlier start: Eton College and Slough bricks in the 1440s
Slough’s brick story begins earlier than many think. In 1442, King Henry VI ordered an estimated 2.5 million bricks for the building of Eton College. The order was so large that a new brickyard had to be set up in the area to meet demand. Those bricks drew on the high-quality local clay found in and around Slough, proving early that the ground here could support large-scale production. While later centuries brought machines and railways, this royal project shows that Slough’s clay and skills were already on the map in the mid-15th century.
Why Slough became a brickmaking hub: clay, canals, and the railway
Brickmaking needs three things. Good clay, heat, and a way to move heavy loads. Slough had all three in a rare mix.
The Thames Valley offers layers of workable clay and sand. You can dig it with simple tools and shape it with water. Local mixes fired into strong bricks that builders liked. Iron-rich clay gave warm reds; different mixes and firing pushed toward buff or yellow shades. With sand to reduce shrinkage and water to temper, a small crew could turn a pit of clay into tidy stacks of bricks within weeks.
Before modern roads, moving tons of bricks on carts was slow and costly. The Great Western Railway reached Slough in 1838, and that changed the game. Wagons could load tight stacks of bricks and ship them to London year round. In the 1880s, the Slough Arm of the Grand Union Canal gave another route. Coal came in for firing, finished bricks went out to markets. That two-way flow made the numbers work for yard owners.
Demand kept rising. London was expanding, and new suburbs needed walls, terraces, and public buildings. Slough sat close enough to serve the city, but had land for pits, drying sheds, and kilns. A walk across a field might take you past a clay hole, a clamp fire, and a row of drying hacks. The work was hard, but steady. With the ground and the links in place, the town’s brick story took off.
Local clay shaped the color and strength of Slough bricks
The Thames Valley holds brick clays with useful sands and iron. Makers mixed clay with water and sand, then kneaded the batch until smooth. Early bricks were hand molded, dusted with sand to stop sticking, then turned out onto boards. Drying racks, called hacks, protected them from rain before firing.
Color varied with the clay and the fire. Iron gave warm reds. Different mixes and higher firing could push toward buff or yellow shades. Builders chose local bricks for farm buildings, small bridges, and town projects. The material felt familiar and held up in the regional climate.
Before steam power, small rural brickfields served local building
From the 1600s into the early 1800s, brickmaking near Slough stayed small and seasonal. Villages kept modest brickfields on the edge of fields. Workers dug clay in summer, when the sun could help dry green bricks. Firing used clamp stacks, built like a long loaf of bricks with channels for fuel. A clamp might burn for days or weeks, depending on the weather and how tight the stack was packed.
Output was slow, and roads were poor. A cartload of bricks cost more to haul than many buyers could pay. Most bricks stayed within a few miles of where they were made. That kept styles local and limited waste, but it also capped growth.
Canals and the Great Western Railway put Slough bricks on the map
The Great Western Railway brought reliable, year round transport in 1838. That had two direct effects. It let yard owners scale up, since they could sell to London markets. It also brought in coal at a better price, which improved firing.
The Slough Arm canal arrived in the 1880s as a freight link to the Grand Union system. Barges could carry heavy loads cheaply. Coal and sand came in. Finished bricks left by water, heading toward worksites across west London. These links connected Slough to big projects and kept kilns busy even in winter. The result was a burst of new brickfields, larger sheds, and permanent kilns.
Victorian to interwar growth: kilns, machines, and the people who made the bricks
By the late 1800s, Victorian brickworks in Slough looked very different from the early rural fields. Machines arrived. Permanent stacks rose. The work still demanded muscle, but output and quality jumped.
Large yards lined up presses, wire cutters, and pug mills. These machines mixed clay to a steady texture, pushed it through dies, and shaped bricks fast. Makers began to use standard sizes more widely, which helped builders plan. Some bricks carried a maker’s mark in the frog, the hollow on one face, to show where they came from. More bricks, more repeatable quality, fewer rejects.
Permanent kilns meant better control of heat. You still saw clamp fires, but the shift to fixed kilns cut waste and allowed year round firing. Coal remained the main fuel, and careful stacking stayed key to straight, sound bricks.
Labor shaped the heart of the yards. Men and boys moved clay, turned bricks, and loaded kilns. Women often worked in sorting and stacking. Crews mixed local labor with migrants from nearby counties and Ireland. Long days were common in the busy months. Over time, safety rules and child labor laws improved conditions. The trade kept a sense of pride, since a bad batch showed up in the wall for all to see.
Yard sites spread around the edges of the town. Areas near Langley, Colnbrook, Iver, and Stoke Poges saw pits and works due to clay and access to transport. As the town grew, some later industrial sites, including parts of what became the Slough Trading Estate, rose on or near former clay diggings and yards. That pattern, dig, build, reuse, is still visible if you know where to look.
From hand-molded to machine-pressed bricks in the late 1800s
Pug mills mixed clay to a uniform paste. Presses shaped bricks in seconds. Wire-cut systems sliced a continuous clay bar into neat units. These steps raised speed and kept sizes consistent, which saved mortar and time on site.
Standard sizing also helped freight. Bricks stacked tighter in wagons and barges. Maker’s marks in the frog told buyers who made them, a simple way to track orders and show pride in the product.
Who worked in the yards, and what life was like
Bricks were made by hand: clay was molded, laid out to dry on hacks, then fired in kilns. Men worked in teams of six, called stools. A skilled stool could produce around 5,000 bricks in a day.
Brickmaking called for stamina and skill. Typical jobs included:
- Digging and barrowing clay to the pug mill
- Molding or pressing green bricks
- Turning and stacking bricks in drying hacks
- Loading and firing kilns
- Drawing, sorting, and carting finished bricks
Pay often rose with output. Summer brought long shifts to use the dry weather. Winters focused on firing and maintenance. Many families had two or three members in the yards at once. Over time, regulations cut child labor and improved kiln safety, though the work stayed hot, heavy, and dirty.
Local firms and output: Slough and Langley Brickfields and others
Several brickmaking firms worked around Slough. The best known was Slough and Langley Brickfields, founded by the Nash family in 1845. At its peak, Slough and Langley Brickfields turned out about 14 million bricks a year and supplied bricks for the Eton College Memorial to the Fallen of the South African War. Other local makers included William and Wallingtons, William Willet’s, Peake’s, and Langley (Caves and Smith).
Where were the brickfields around Slough?
Clay pits and yards dotted areas around Langley, Colnbrook, Iver, and Stoke Poges. Near the Slough Arm canal, some fields gained wharves and sheds to load barges. As brickmaking waned, many pits filled with water or became landfill. Later, housing and industry spread across those footprints. Parts of the Slough Trading Estate and other industrial zones sit by, or on, older workings. When you pass a pond, a strange dip in the ground, or a straight bank by the canal, you may be looking at the bones of a former yard.
What happened next: decline, heritage, and how to spot it today
After the mid 1900s, the trade shrank. New materials arrived, cities pushed out, and tighter rules changed the balance. Many local yards closed or shifted focus. The story did not end, it just faded into the bricks around us.
Rising use of concrete blocks cut demand for common bricks. New building methods favored faster, lighter systems. Imports and larger regional works undercut small yards on price. Land near Slough grew more valuable for housing and industry than for open pits. Some clay beds were worked out or turned into ponds. Cleaner air rules and stricter planning also made old, smoky kilns harder to justify. One by one, the clamps went cold and the long chimneys came down.
After the brickyards closed
Brickmaking in Slough ended after the Second World War. Former brickfield land was later built over; many sites are now housing or industrial estates.
What remains is a map you can still read with your feet. The Slough Arm canal offers towpaths where coal once came in and barges took bricks out. Ponds and uneven ground hint at old pits. Long rows of brick terraces show local styles in bond and color. Schools, bridges, and civic buildings from the late 1800s and early 1900s often carry brick faces that match the soil beneath them. Photograph details, like the frog mark or the bond pattern, and you begin to build your own record.
Learning More
If you want to learn more, the Slough Museum and local studies libraries hold photos, trade directories, and memoirs. Older parish and property records for the area can sit with Buckinghamshire Archives for pre-1974, while later materials often appear in the Berkshire Record Office. Old Ordnance Survey maps from the 1870s to the 1930s are gold. Look for “Brick Field,” “Clay Pit,” or “Kiln” labels, then compare editions to see growth and decline. Historic photos help you match a chimney line to a field you can visit today.