Normanton Manufactured Brick

A plain and simple everyday object in need of adoption, but one that helps us build links to a key element of Derby’s manufacturing past. It was bricks like this that helped the city develop into a major industrial centre and transport hub.

Records suggest this brick was manufactured around 1870, at brickworks operated by James Reading, a builder and brickmaker of Burton Road. The 1881 OS map shows the Normanton Brickworks to be situated between Normanton and Littleover, in the area now occupied by allotment gardens at the southern end of Warwick Avenue.

The years following 1841, and the arrival of the mainline railway in Derby, were a period of rapid growth and expansion. As more railways arrived, other industry grew to support the railway and take advantage of the transport hub, creating a rising demand for housing for the many workers moving into the area. Locally manufactured bricks were an important element of this process, with this object representing one of the many brickworks that operated around the area, utilising accessible local clay deposits.