Bridgwater brick and tile museum

Bridgwater had been making bricks since the late 17th century. The brickfields produced bricks baked in clamps. These varied in surface texture and colour, variations exploited admirably at The Lions on West Quay. The duke’s building schemes called for large quantities of brick but it was only the introduction of the kiln that made them more uniform and suitable for mass production. The first Bridgwater kiln may have been the duke of Chandos’s giant glass kiln, the foundations of which survive, but in the 19th century dozens of brick and tile kilns were built on both sides of the river as the demand for these products grew not only from Bridgwater itself but the rest of Britain and its growing empire. The only survivor is no 6 kiln at the former Barham’s yard east of the river. The chimney dates from the conversion of the updraft kiln to the downdraft method.