An early morning trip out to Stewartby this morning, to see the last of these four chimneys which have dominated the landscape for almost 100 years.
"The structures are a symbol of the brickwork industry in Bedfordshire and date back to the 1930s. Four of the 32 original chimneys remain on the site, standing up to 70m (230ft) tall. At its peak in 1936, Stewartby Brickworks produced 500 million bricks a year. The site closed in 2008 as it could not achieve emission standards."
Well no more. Today they were blasted down to make way for a housing estate. The brickworks are the reason that our small town of Bedford has the highest population of Italians in the UK outside of London. Many workers came from Italy. The London Brick Company hired overseas workers, first people displaced from Eastern Europe, then Italians in the 1950s, and later Indians, Pakistanis and West Indians. We owe our rich multicultural community in part to the brickworks.
