Foreword by Martyn Fretwell - Since Jeff Sheard wrote his book, Clay Stealers to St Pancras Station: A History of Nottingham's Brickmakers, we have been in regular contact regarding other Nottingham Brickmakers & with Jeff now writing a more in-depth account of Edward Gripper's early life which was not in his book, I have created this post to showcase his new work.
Edward Gripper's Early Years in Nottingham 1852-1858 by Jeff Sheard.
Edward Gripper’s early years in Nottingham were shrouded in mystery, however information from the British Newspaper Archive now has made it possible to form a much clearer picture of his business activities after 1850. The first article from the Newspaper Archive introduces Mr William Whitehead whose primary occupation was an auctioneer, however with his “finger in many pies” he was also a freeholder and manufacturer of bricks "with three admirably run yards situated on Beacon Hill" located in the St Ann's district close to the town of Nottingham.
This article provides valuable information regarding the plant and equipment used to manufacture bricks before steam power was introduced in 1852 by Edward Gripper. Nottingham Brickmakers had already made inroads towards the "Holy Grail" of all-year-round brick production. This was absolutely necessary to meet the ever-increasing demands of the growing industrial town.
Nottingham Journal May 18th 1855.
TO FARMERS, BRICKMAKERS, BUILDERS AND OTHERS
To be Sold by Auction, on Tuesday, the May 22nd, 1895, at Eleven for Twelve O'clock Precisely, by MR W. WHITEHEAD, upon the premises, Mapperley Park, (Alexandra Park) Nottingham, the entire PLANT and STOCK-IN-TRADE of the BRICKYARD formally belonging to Mr W. Smith, the ground being required immediately for the setting out as villa sites. The plant consists of a excellent CLAY MILL, worked by horse-power; large CLAY HOVEL, covered with half-inch boarding; BRICKMAKING SHED 98 feet by 19 feet; Ditto, 92 feet by 19 feet, Ditto, 80 feet by 19feet, all covered with pantiles, nearly new. Extensive Flues with furnaces, dampers, and chimney; two large Kilns, with droughts, &c. The STOCK of nearly 200,000 common bricks, 20,000 Cants, 40,000 culverts; quantity of half-rounds, quarter-rounds, floor bricks, saddle copings, circulars &c.---The whole of the plant being new within the last three years, and the Stock good, the opportunity is a favourable one for parties building.
2, Albert Street, Nottingham
The traditional period for brickmaking on a smaller scale was from Our Ladies Day to St Michaelmas Day, March 25th to September 29th. St. Michaelmas Day was also a traditional holiday to celebrate the gathering of the harvest. Inclement weather conditions were the bane of traditional brickmakers. Horse-drawn clay mills had been introduced to the area as early as 1820, followed later with heated drying floors, covered brickmaking sheds and enclosed kilns with flues. Nottingham's seasonal brickmakers often worked in the malting trade during the winter months; malting barley for brewing purposes is a similar occupation all about kilns and critical temperatures.
Land released after the 1845 Enclosure Act was purchased by many speculators for building land, industrial and housing. A popular investment was to buy land on the clay fields, situated on the hilly terrain of the north-eastern outskirts of the town, then install a brick maker or brickmaking company who would pay rent until the clay had been exhausted. It was commonplace in Nottingham for earlier brickyards to remove only the top clay. This would remain the case until the powerful machinery needed to process the deeper more challenging compact clays were introduced. After the top clay reserves had been exhausted, brickmaking ceased and the freeholder would then be left with a ready prepared and levelled building plot, perfect for selling on at a healthy profit.
One area of obvious brickmaking is located on Woodborough Road (Mapperley Hills) adjacent to Hungerhill Gardens, the area was eventually incorporated into the southern section of the Alexandra Park Estate. The Nottingham City Council built a multi-storey block of flats on the location in the 1960s. The land was formally part of the Mapperley Common, a ribbon of land situated on the eastern side of Woodborough Road that stretched from Hungerhill Gardens to Porchester Road. The area had been associated with brickmaking, both official and unofficial, for hundreds of years. The Hungerhill Gardens (now allotments) are Britain's oldest and largest detached town gardens and because of its rich history, the 75 acre site has been declared a Grade II listed site. In the 1840s, the area was established as "Pleasure Gardens" to provide space for the middle classes to get away from the dirt and grime of the expanding industrial town.
An area of land formally Mapperley Common, (the date unclear), was purchased by a member of the Smith family, a prosperous family of Nottingham Bankers after one of Nottingham's Enclosure Acts, possibly before the extensive 1845 Act. One of my research adventures to this area provided the evidence of brickmaking on the site which was overwhelming. The clay hills situated to the rear of Alexandra Park (Hungerhills) were scattered with hundreds of reject bricks fused together in large blocks known as burrs. The evidence of over fired brick burrs pointed to a catastrophic kiln meltdown. It can take weeks or months to hack and chisel out the contents of a kiln when the temperature has been misjudged and overheated.
Nottingham Local Studies Library.
Edward Gripper (junior) was born in 1815 into a small Quaker Community in Layer Breton, Essex. His father was a landowner and farmer, a very active member of the local Society of Friends. The Gripper family lived at Layer Breton Hall and worked 256 acres of farmland. Edward Gripper received an excellent commercial education and was the manager of his father's estate and farm for many years, employing a considerable staff; 19 men and six boys are shown in the 1851 census. He worked with his father until 1850-51, he then made the decision to leave his native Essex give up farming and look for pastures new. He moved to Nottingham and invested in a pioneering Steam Powered Brickmaking Process. The family farm was later sold, and his remaining family moved to smaller accommodation, the White House, in Layer Breton.
With the repeal of the Corn Laws 1846, the future of farming looked rather bleak. In 1850 two newspaper articles appeared in the Essex Herald, proclaiming that Edward Gripper was now an "Appraiser and Estate Agent". The second article is aimed directly at poachers and anyone sporting on the land without authority. "Anyone doing so would be deemed TRESPASSERS and dealt with as the law directs".
Layer Breton Hall, Essex 2010.
So was Edward suffering some kind of midlife crisis or had he mapped out his future in a purposeful and calculated way ? Edward Gripper's name next appears on December 10th 1852, In the Nottingham Review under the headline - Scarcity of Houses in Nottingham. The article refers to the high prices charged for rent and the very high demand for these houses. There were eighty-four applications alone for one house situated in the select Derby Road area of Nottingham. "The demand for houses of every class is on a similar scale." The article then continues under the sub-heading, The Brick Manufacture.
It will be some consolation to builders and others, whose operations are retarded throughout the country by the supply of bricks being deficient, to learn that companies have been formed in the most eligible localities that could be selected, for the purpose of manufacturing them in steam factories by a new patent process. One of these establishments has for more than twelve months past been in operation on a small scale at Huntingdon, where six men and four boys are making sixty thousand bricks a week, no alterations in weather in the slightest degree interfering with their operations. Under the same patent, and on an improved scale, immense works are just being put down at Arlesey, also on the Great Northern Line, a little more than twenty miles south of the metropolis, where about a million-and-a-quarter will be made weekly for the London Market. Other works are in progress at Cambridge, where 120,000 a week will be made, at Rugby (120,000), Leicester (600,000), Liverpool (500,000), Manchester (600,000), Birmingham (600,000), Derby (120,000), Nottingham (360,000), Doncaster, for the great Yorkshire towns (800,000). The Nottingham firm trading under the name of Edward Gripper and Company has commenced active operations. We understand they will have a large supply of bricks ready for sale early in the ensuing spring. The company's works will occupy forty-six acres at Mapperley. As the clay of which the patent brick is made must necessarily be ground very fine and is then forced by immense mechanical pressure through the moulds, a brick is therefore produced that when burnt will ring like china and is "as sound as an acorn." Another great advantage the patent brick possesses over the common brick is that being perforated, one-third of the clay is thereby taken out of it, enabling one horse to cart six hundred of them along an ordinary road, instead of only four hundred, to the place where they may be required for use. When put into work, the perforations form so perfect a key for the mortar that a single brick wall is said to be as strong as an ordinary nine-inch wall. When placed under hydraulic pressure, the-patent brick will bear three times the weight of a solid wall before it breaks or is crushed. To the eye, the face of a patent-brick is as beautiful as are the faces of the pressed bricks, or more so, the brass dies through which they pass, about a dozen at a time at the rate of 2,000 per hour, imparting to them a glossy smoothness the pressed brick seldom gains. Mr Beart, of Godmanchester, is the patentee. As this adaption will give a great stimulus to building operations, much additional labour will thereby be created for the working classes, and none will be more benefited by it than brickmakers themselves. Instead of their employment, as previously being uncertain, and their occupation cheerless and demoralizing, there is now a certain prospect for them having work to attend all year round, ten hours a day, every working day alike (all clay getters excepted) within the works or factories, which may be rendered as comfortable for the operatives employed as any workshop in the United Kingdom. A still greater privilege to be conferred by this process upon the workmen and boys employed will be that the arrangements made entirely preclude the necessity of Sunday work, leaving them opportunities they have not hitherto enjoyed for mental and spiritual cultivation.
Edward Gripper first appeared in the local trade directories in 1853. It seems an incredible achievement that Gripper could leave the family business of farming at the age of 38 and within just a few years to be in charge of one the most productive brick companies in Nottingham. His ground-breaking introduction of steam power and automation increased production and lowered the cost of bricks while improving the product. Nottingham was now a boomtown and Gripper was definitely in the right place at the right time. Over 158 factories had been built between 1851 and 1857 for the lace and hosiery industries alone. The grandest buildings are still to be seen in the Lace Market. One observer commented that ‘’Nottingham had become the Manchester of the Midlands’’.
Wylie's Old and New Nottingham 1853 states "that an estimated 21 million bricks were brought into Nottingham and its suburbs the previous year’'.
At first the exact location of Gripper’s first brickyard in Nottingham was unclear & it was from another quote from Wylie's account which pointed to it's location. "A company under the name Messrs' Gripper and Co. have purchased an extensive piece of land on the Mapperley-Hill, where gigantic preparations for brick and tile manufacturing are being made". Unfortunately, Mapperley Hill is 1.5 miles long, so this information is somewhat vague. The clue that eventually clinched the exact location was that Gripper’s brickyard occupied an area of 46 acres. The actual area occupied by what become known in later years as the Mapperley Middle Yard, situated in the area referred to as the "Brickmaking Estate," situated to the northwest of Woodborough Road. The Mapperley Middle Yard was flanked on both sides by two other brickyards, Cartledge’s Yard off Private Road and Huthwaite's, a farmer and brick manufacturer, trading under the name of Mapperley Brick Company, Scout Lane (Woodthorpe Drive).
The date indicated for Gripper’s arrival in Nottingham is significant, 1852, one year after the Great Exhibition in London. Robert Beart is known to have displayed his Patent Brick Manufacturing Process, Page 41, of the Exhibition Catalogue. Constructing and establishing Mapperley Middle Yard as a going concern by December 1852 seems a gargantuan task even for a man with Gripper's talents. Maybe he was introduced to Beart's patented steam-driven process before the 1851 Great Exhibition ? It is still unclear how Gripper made contact with his future business partners John Green Hine and Thomas Chambers Hine. In the Nottingham section of Hunts Mining Statistics 1858, J G. Hine is quoted as the freeholder, Gripper, the brick manufacturer.
I stumbled upon a snippet of information possibly connecting Gripper and T C. Hine during some earlier research. Alfred Stapleton's History of Mapperley refers to a row of 16 brickmakers’ cottages, situated on Woodborough Rd, directly opposite Mapperley Middle Yard. According to Stapleton, the terraced row was reputed to have been designed by T C. Hine.
Fern Cottages, Woodborough Road, Nottingham.
The distinctive blue brick string course would have involved an extreme amount of work for the bricklayers, bricks having to be cut to size above and below the arching. A sure sign an architect was involved with the project!
The following information was found much later, in the publication Perry's Bankrupt Gazette February 18th 1854.
Partnerships Dissolved : Edward Gripper and Edward Gripper, Junior of Layer Breton, Farmers. September 29th 1855.
The next snippet of information is a real eye-opener! Published in the same newspaper, Perry's Bankrupt Gazette, October 6th 1855.
Partnerships Dissolved: Hine John Green, Edward Gripper, Jun. and Thomas Chambers Hine, of Mapperley, in Basford, and elsewhere, Brick and Tile Makers as regards T C. Hine September 10th I855.
Alexandra Park, Nottingham has a fascinating history and association with T.C. Hine and his brother John Green Hine, both of whom were responsible for the area's development during the 1850s. The following information is compiled from the website of the Mapperley and Sherwood History Group and gives a real insight into the brother's business activities during the period.
The Hine Family were a prosperous old family from Beaminster in Dorset. Jonathon Hine (senior) came to Nottingham in 1795, he started out as a framework knitter and rose to become a senior partner in Chambers, Wilson & Morley, later to become the famous I. & R. Morley Company. In 1803 he married Mary Chambers, daughter of Thomas Chambers. Ten years later in 1813 their eldest son Thomas Chambers Hine was born. Instead of joining the family firm he was articled to a London architect returning to Nottingham in 1834 to establish his own practice, initially in partnership with William Patterson a local builder. By the 1850s he was regarded as Nottingham's best and busiest architect. By 1850 Nottingham's lace trade was at its zenith with many nouveau-riche manufacturers seeking homes outside the town to display their new wealth and status.
Thomas Chambers Hine had his eye on a particular piece of land released as part of the 1845 Enclosure Act located on the lower section of the former Mapperley Common, plot no.163. The Hine brothers drew up an ambitious provisional plan for plot 163 shown on Frederick Jackson's 1861 map, but they immediately started to run into difficulties. Less than six months after purchasing plot 163, in January 1854 Thomas accepted the post of surveyor to develop the Duke of Newcastle's Park Estate, this occupied his attention for the next 30 years. His office was responsible for 200 of the 650 houses constructed. Thomas almost immediately sold his interest in plot 163 to his brother John who took out two large loans to buy out his brother. By October 1855 John was in serious financial difficulties and unable to meet the loan repayments, it looked as if the intended development would not proceed.
T C. Hine had already established a reputation for developing rather unprepossessing sites. Still the proposed estate (plot 163) was possibly not so attractive to clients until Woodborough Road had been created & with the area being levelled in 1886. It was that steep that horse-drawn carriages could only reach the entrance to the estate with difficulty. On the other hand the Park Estate in Nottingham was more attractive to clients because in addition to it being more accessible, it was extra-parochial and not subject to the Poor Law Rate or other local taxes.
However in 1857 John Hine managed to start the first four large houses situated on the southern edge of plot 163 at the entrance to the estate – Enderleigh, Fernleigh, Springfield and Sunnyholm. These four houses were designed by T.C. Hine and were strategically positioned with views down Trough Close and over Hungerhill Gardens. Enderleigh was intended as John Hine's family home, but he never lived in it and in 1862 he moved away to London. However he held onto the undeveloped land (west of Albert Road and north to Ransom Road) until 1881, when it was sold.
Map of the southern section of Alexandra Park, the blue outline corresponds precisely to the former Mapperley Common, before the enclosure act of 1845. The dotted line is the north boundary of Enderleigh, a sunken plot well below the level of the other houses, the former brickyard of William Smith.
The following newspaper article announces the dissolving of the partnership of John Green Hine and Edward Gripper and appears in the London Gazette on 2nd March 1858. The dates correspond with the development of the first four houses in Alexandra Park. It looks for all to see that J G. Hine sold the freehold of the Mapperley Middle Yard to Edward Gripper to help finance the new development.
NOTICE is hereby given, that the Co-partnership heretofore subsisting between us the undersigned, Edward Gripper the younger, of the town of Nottingham, Gentleman, and John Green Hine, of the same town, Gentleman, as Brick and Tile Makers, at Mapperley, in the parish of Basford, in the county of Nottingham, and elsewhere, under the style or firm of Edward Gripper and Co., was dissolved as from the 1st day of January last.—As witness our hands this 27th Day of February 1858.
© Crown Copyright. Reproduced with permission of NLS/Ordnance Survey 1915.
Footnote by Martyn Fretwell - Coloured green on the 1915 OS map above, this was Edward Gripper's first yard which he established in 1852 & was later known as the Middle Yard when owned by Nottingham Patent Brick Co. In 1866 Edward Gripper went into partnership with William Burgass & the Nottingham Patent Brick Company was formed on the 3rd of June 1867. The yellow yard was Gripper's second yard, later NPBCo.'s Top Yard & the purple works was NPBCo.'s Bottom Yard. With the Top & Bottom Yards already closed the Middle Yard (green) closed in 1969 as part of the restructuring of the Nottingham Brick Co. and production was transferred to the Dorket Head works in Arnold. So the story of Edward Gripper after 1858 continues in Jeff's book if you have a copy or my Mapperley Post.
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