The making of firebricks, more properly termed refractories, had been carried on long before the Industrial Revolution, and indeed all over the country. However, from the earliest times the fireclay extracted from the bowels of the Black Country was considered to be of the highest quality. Usually lying beneath the coal seam, the extraction of fireclay occurred within a relatively small area, centred on Lye, Cradley, Amblecote, Brierley Hill, Pensnett and Gornal. It was shaped into articles known as refractories, of which the most familiar kind is the firebrick, and it was noted that Black Country refractories could withstand the very highest temperatures without cracking. When the Industrial Revolution dawned, the Black Country fireclay fields really came into their own, and by the late nineteenth century there was barely a blast furnace, glass cone, pottery kiln, steel works, iron foundry, coal mine, or chemical plant that did not use refractories of one type or another made in the Black Country. Almost every industry in the Empire depended on our brickyard chaps and wenches, who by 1864 were making 30 million firebricks alone every year.
In the late eighteenth century, the inventor William Murdock began experimenting with extracting gas from coal. In 1803, he successfully lit the Soho Works in Birmingham with gas, heating coal in a container called a retort to extract the gas without it igniting. At first, many different types of retorts were tested, and in around 1820 the first retorts made of iron and lined with fireclay appeared. Later, retorts made entirely from fireclay were used successfully, and the Black Country had an opportunity to add to its thousands of wares.
At least a dozen Black Country brickyards added the manufacture of gas retorts to their portfolio, including Harris & Pearson of Amblecote, King Brothers of Stourbridge, Evers & Sons of Cradley, Harper & Moores of Netherend, Mobberley & Perry of Woodside, Timmis & Co. of The Lye, and Mobberley & Bayley, of Lomey Town in Cradley Heath. However, one name stood out among all others, a family firm that was at one time the world's leading producer of gas retorts, the Lower Gornal firm of Benjamin Gibbons junior. Our thanks go to Jackie Jenkins, of Gornalwood, for supplying us with these rare images of the firm, which appeared in an advertising brochure produced by the company in 1908.
The firm was established by the enterprising Benjamin Gibbons junior in 1834. He purchased a parcel of land, in the neighbourhood of the Gornal hamlet of Dibdale, which proved to be rich in both coal and fireclay, the latter from the same seam that made Stourbridge fireclay world-famous. It was Benjamin Gibbons who, in the mid-nineteenth century, first began to make gas retorts from his excellent fireclay, becoming one of the first manufacturers in the Black Country to do so. The quality of these products, with their low prices representing exceptionally good value, soon spread the reputation of Gibbons far and wide.
By the time of Benjamin Gibbons' death in 1863, the Dibdale Works encompassed coal mining, construction and engineering, as well as fireclay extraction. Upon his death, the constructive and engineering side of the firm was transferred to his sons, B. and W.P. Gibbons, who traded as Gibbons Bros. The fireclay side of the business was, however, taken over by Benjamin's formidable widow, and she continued to run it until her retirement in 1880, a rare example of a Victorian woman at the helm of a large business.
Upon Mrs Gibbons' retirement, control of both sides of the business passed to her two sons, although the names of the two firms remained, and a year later the firm expanded by taking over the plant of J. Eanson, of Wolverhampton. By 1895, the two businesses sprawled on some fifty acres between Dibdale Lane and Bagley's Lane and beyond, and were made into limited companies.
Although the two firms were run separately, they shared the same premises and offices, and their activities mingled to such an extent that they could be considered as one huge concern. Some idea of the size of the firm is given by the brochure supplied by Jackie. In the image on the bottom left, the combined offices can be seen at the top, a handsome, imposing building, which were said in the 1905 publication The Black Country and its Industries to be "fitted with every convenience for facilitating the work of the clerical staff and with every aid to their comfort."
Adjoining the offices was the companies' own fire station, complete with fire engine. The photograph at the top of the image here shows the road which curved past the companies' office buildings, giving the impression of a street in a small town, rather than a business premises!
The clay was extracted from the pits and transported on the firms' own electric railway. After being "weathered" for several months, it was passed through a huge mill, capable of processing over 100 tons per day, to be ground. The clay was then screened and conveyed automatically to the tempering pan and "pug mill," where water was added to make the clay more workable. After being "pugged," or kneaded sufficiently, it was then used to shape different sizes and types of bricks.
However, by far the most important part of the works was the retort manufacturing section. Here retorts of varying sizes and shapes, including oval, round and D-shaped profiles, were produced.
Although Gibbons' first retorts had been made laboriously by hand - a ten foot retort took fifteen days to hand-mould - the purchase of a Leeds-made retort extrusion machine in the 1840s revolutionised the business. This literally squeezed the clay over the required shaped die to form the retort. A ten foot long retort could now be made in as little as twenty minutes, and was a fascinating process to the uninitiated observer. The writer of The Black Country and its Industries talked of the machine with typical hyperbole:
"It creates no small wonder in the visitor who was familiar only with the slower hand moulding process to see these the penderous goods so delicately and perfectly shaped at almost instantaneous speed out of the mass of dark clay with which the machine is fed."
The completed retorts were then moved with cranes and pulleys into the extensive drying sheds. Most of these sheds were huge, each being divided into eight sections of 120 feet long, with the whole width of the room being 150 feet. The retorts were carefully loaded into the sheds and stood on end, and dried by means of hot water pipes underneath the floor, which kept the rooms at a constant temperature.
Once dried, the retorts were burned in one of the companies' 21 kilns, most of which were also massive in proportion. The kilns were gradually heated, and when the temperature had been maintained long enough to fire the clay, were gently cooled again to prevent cracking. The photograph at the bottom of the image in the centre below shows the distinctive beehive-like kilns of the yard among the stacks, with yet more retorts of varying shapes and sizes.
The drying sheds and kilns were powered by Gibbons' own coal, and the central image on the photograph on the bottom left shows the whimsies of the firms' numerous coal shafts, which were scattered around the site. Below it are the smoking stacks of the brickworks, with the huge finished gas retorts awaiting transportation.
This transportation came courtesy of the firm's very own branch railway, which joined the Earl of Dudley's line near Pensnett, as well as branches on the GWR. They had their own rolling stock, which can be seen at the top of the image in the centre, and even a locomotive.
These facilities meant that the firms were largely self-sufficient. Obtaining both the necessary fireclay and coal from their own pits, the materials could be mixed and prepared on the premises, and when completed, transported via rail all over the country. The company's engineering division, which produced structural ironwork, elevators, conveyors, coal and coke breakers, plant for handling coal for inclined or horizontal retorts, and the means for unloading barges and storing coal, could also manufacture on site all that was necessary to make a complete gas works, without any outside assistance.
By the early twentieth century, Gibbons were the largest manufacturers of gas retorts in the world, and by 1908 they had supplied retorts to, or completely erected, 79 gas works in Great Britain, including the mammoth gasworks in London. Many were also shipped abroad, with customers including Brazil, Italy, Australia and Spain.
Over the years, Gibbons' employed thousands of people in the Gornal district and beyond. Remaining a family-run firm for over 120 years, the Gibbonses were very well-respected locally, and often talked of reverentially in hushed tones.
However, in the late sixties Britain made the switch from coal gas to natural gas, and the demand for gas retorts dwindled. The company finally closed in 1987, and some of the last remaining buildings, on the corner of what is now Dibdale Road West and Deepdale Lane, were demolished earlier this year. Almost the whole of the old works has been erased by a prestigious housing development; and as children play in the pleasant gardens that were previously clay pits and pit mounds, even the present owners have little knowledge of the hundreds of years of Black Country industrial history that lurks beneath their feet.