The Wallsend and Hebburn Coal Company established a brickworks at the Rising Sun Colliery in 1908 to make common bricks, mainly for the Company's own collieries.
Extract from ‘Brickworks of the North East’ by Peter J Davidson, about the Rising Sun Colliery
“A 2½ feet layer of shale in the Main Coal seam was dug and brought out of the mine to make the bricks. In 1924 the yard was working a 3 shift per day system, with only 8 men on each shift.
The bricks were burned in a 16 chamber Hoffman kiln, each ‘chamber’ would hold 10,500 bricks, up to a temperature of 1050 centigrade. Some time before 1963 the chimney height of the kiln was lowered, and an electric fan supplemented the draught circulating in the kiln. In 1965 an Octopus Automatic Feeding system was installed in the kiln.
Between 1963 to 1965 opencast shale came from Ewart Hill and Acorn Bank. From 1965 to 1968 good quality shale was brought from Wardley and made into second engineering bricks.
The Bradley and Craven machines could press 14000 bricks during an 8½ hour shift. In the 1960s when 18 men worked here, weekly production was 86000 bricks. Norman Bell, Foreman”
It is believed that the Company supplied bricks for use in coastal defence structures during World War Two, as bricks with the brickwork’s markings have been found along the Northumberland Coastline.
A brick produced at The Rising Sun Colliery Brickworks can be seen on the Brick Heritage Monument at Path Head Water Mill, Summerhill, Blaydon. This monument built during the summer of 2022 by Chris Tilney and his son Mark, is a wonderful tribute to the industrial heritage of the North East.
