Site Records

Site Name: Emmer Green (Hanover) South Chalk Mine

Jct. Peppard Road & Kiln Lane
Emmer Green
Reading, Berks
OS Grid Ref: SU722769

Sub Brit site visit 2nd November 2003

HISTORICAL RECORDS FOR THE BRICKFIELD AND MINE

As Emmer Green fell within Oxfordshire until 1911, records relating to that county need to be consulted as well as those for Reading.

It has been claimed (North, 1986) that Charles I (who lived 1600 - 1649) once took refuge in a 100 foot long chalk cave near Surley Row, in Emmer Green.

The first recorded kiln at the site was in 1645 (or 1654) on what was then called Homer's Field (Ormonde, 2003.) Robert Plot (1705) noted brickmaking in the locality in 1705, observing that 'they make a sort of brick 22 inches long and above 6 inches broad.' One Francis Dormer is recorded as owner in 1842. The 1844 tithe map shews a brick kiln and four other buildings at the mine site.

Hunt (1860) listed 19 brickfields in Oxfordshire, including Caversham kilns, the freehold property of R. Palmer, Esq., M.P., where one John Leach was working Reading Beds and London Clay, and manufacturing 500,000 bricks, 200,000 tiles, 100,000 agricultural (land drainage) pipes, and 20,000 sewage pipes annually. At the same time, he reported (under Berkshire) nine further active brickworks in and around Reading, at the Aldermaston, Beech Hill, Castle, Coley, Erleigh Court, Katesgrove, Reading, Rose, and Waterloo brickfields or kilns. Under Hunt's 'quarries' heading, we find additionally a Mr. Collier listed at the Castle Pit working chalk to be burnt for lime. There are no relevant quarries listed under Oxfordshire. Hunt issued a comprehensive list of brickfields and quarries only for 1858 - there are no comparable lists in earlier or later issues of his Mining records.

Whitaker, et. al. (1872) noted that there was then visible, in the southern brickyard, a section of the clay exploited shewing downfaulted London Clay alongside the characteristically 'variously coloured mottled plastic clays of the Reading Beds,' He continued to record that 'In making a chalk-well on the eastern side of the fault, about 40 feet of clay was passed through before the Chalk was reached, and immediately above the latter there was about 3 feet of clayey green sand (bottom-bed) with oyster-shells at the base. In the other [northern] brickyard the depth to the Chalk is about the same.'

By the Ordnance Survey map of 1877 the southern end of the site is shewn as apparently an abandoned pit, with a bank of kilns alongside Kiln Road. Large-scale brickmaking had evidently migrated northwards a little, where two clay pits, two kilns, and a number of other buildings are labelled Emmergreen Kiln (brick & tile works.)

John Leach was succeeded by Ebenezer Wood, and in 1891 A.C. Brewerton, and later Brewerton and Stevens were in charge, the latter partnership until 1928. One Charles Stevens occupied Brickwall House. By 1935 a limited company had been established, the Caversham Brick and Tile Works Ltd.

Caversham Brick and Tile Works Ltd are listed at Emmer Green in 1933 and through to 1943 in the Quarry Managers' Journal's Directory (1933 and 1943), producing Old English tiles, building blocks, bricks, agricultural pipes, whiting, land drain pipes, roofing tiles, and hollow bricks. The firm and site appear to have gone out of business by 1950, as neither are listed in the 1950 - 51 Directory. The production of whiting implies the use both of chalk (either mined on site or bought in) and large volumes of water for processing. Blake's (1903) recording of a well at the site, over sixty feet deep, had already been noted.

Jukes-Browne and Hill (1904) reported on a large chalk pit (evidently an openwork) at Caversham displaying soft white chalk, with layers of flints three to six feet apart. 'These flints are black, with a thin white skin; some are cavernous, others in tabular layers; their shape is irregular, generally flattened in the direction of the stratification.' They assigned the Chalk here to the Micraster coranguinum zone.

A Geologists' Association field excursion visited 'the brickfield at Rose Hill' on Saturday, May 13th, 1905 (Monckton and Shrubsole, 1905.) The published report says nothing about the chalk mines, but notes that the clay worked was mostly Reading Beds but also some London Clay, identified by its characteristic fossils and septarian nodules.

The works is thought to have closed in 1947. The land was cleared for redevelopment c. 1977 - 80. Part of Russet Gardens is built within the newer (northern) clay pit.

PROPOSED RESEARCHED AGENDA

Archaeological investigations
The whereabouts of any records made and artefacts removed by the University of Reading Caving Club should be ascertained, and the materials examined. In the event of a sufficiently accurate plan of the mine already existing, this should have added to it (if not already surveyed) the major joints, the disposition of mine spoil and clear walkable pathways, and the several floor levels. The (apparently significantly different) content and the size distribution of the mine spoil should be systematically recorded.

Historical investigations
The only early documentation likely to be worth searching for is amongst Oxfordshire land ownership and estate management records. These might be sought in the first instance in the appropriate record office for the County. More recent papers may be with the current landowners or their solicitors, and with the Land Registry. The early and later geological literature has been well searched, and yields far more for the more accessible Reading itself than for Emmer Green, a long uphill haul! The Geological Survey's field notebooks and unpublished six-inch maps should be examined. Chalk mines were only subject to government inspection and regulation from the coming into effect of the Metalliferous Mines Regulation Act, 1872, and Inspectors of Mines' Reports for the period up to about 1900 may well be productive. The requirements of the 1872 Act relating to the deposit of plans of mines on their abandonment did not apply to small mines with fewer then 12 men working underground. There may be records relating to surface brickworks created under the Factories and Workshops Acts, 1871, 1891, and 1895 etc. Census returns might be used to assist in the identification of names and initials amongst the graffiti, and to reveal the numbers and names of persons employed in brickmaking, chalk mining, or lime burning at the site. The local authority, Reading since 1911, should clearly possess records relating to rating and valuation and land ownership, and to their wartime use of the mines for document storage. The Companies Registration Office will have had files on the Caversham Brick and Tile Works Ltd, and any other relevant limited liability companies. In the case of defunct companies, their records are likely to have been passed to the National Archive (formerly Public Record Office) under classification BT31. It is likely that surviving Companies Registration Office files will be found to contain only a sample (perhaps one in ten) of the Annual Returns.

CONCLUSIONS

The mine below the southern end of the Kiln Road / Peppard Road site appears to have been associated with the earliest industrial use of the land here, with its origins possibly as early as the 17th century. At some time in the 19th century this end of the site was abandoned, and the focus of clay digging and chalk mining shifted northwards. Most of the flint necessarily removed in getting the chalk has been taken out of the south mine, and probably used in local buildings and for road-making, but according to Pearman left underground in the north mines. The presence of large volumes of small chalk spoil, which would have been perfectly usable in brickmaking or for soil dressing, left in the mine suggests that at the time it was worked the mine was primarily for chalk for lime-burning, either for agricultural use for making mortar. The use of ground chalk as an additive to the clay in brickmaking may have been a later development. The presence of chalk block internal walls in at least one house in the neighbourhood suggests that to some extent the mine was also worked as an underground quarry for building stone.

Whitaker's mention, in 1872, of an evidently relatively recently made chalk well, appears to indicate some activity at the southern site significantly later than the 1830s. The fact that the Caversham Brick and Tile Works Ltd were manufacturing whiting in the 1930s and 1940s indicates the probability that chalk mining was still taking place at that date.

The mine is dry and quite stable, probably protected by its impervious clay cover. Those areas most likely to collapse (probably in the neighbourhood of an original haulage shaft which was inadequately capped and which allowed water in) have now collapsed. The existing shaft should be safeguarded against the ingress of water, and areas of unsupported ceiling adjacent to fault plane sided pillars should be monitored. Further developments at surface (such as extended paving or roadways) which might concentrate rainwater on particular points, should be avoided. The system appears to be at least as sound as the Chislehurst 'Caves' in south London, an extensive chalk mine of comparable age which has for over a century been used without mishap as a tourist attraction and (in wartime) for storage (WWI) and as an air raid shelter (WWII.)

Further information and pictures about this site continues here

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