Report - Clock House Brickworks, Capel November 2013

[mookster]

Well this is one of my favourites from way back. For once I got the timing spot on with this one as I managed to get to it before it got tagged, trashed and pikeyed to shit and before the large all-encompassing fence sprung up around it, granted that was akin to shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted though! I actually went here a couple of times, I had a cheeky visit a couple of months after the first with @Landie_Man as I had somehow managed to miss finding the old workshops which were packed with stuff. Back before the fence was erected it was a very easy location to get into if you didn't mind getting mud all the way up your legs tromping across the no mans land, however it soon became a lot tougher with security present and the comprehensive fence.

Clock House Brickworks in Capel near Dorking in Surrey was one of a great many brickworks that was mothballed following the financial crash of the late 2000s. This was a huge place and it looked as if the workers had simply downed tools one day and never came back, which is really kinda what happened.

History stolen from @Grom 's post a few years back...

'The Clock House Brick Company Ltd was founded c.1933 to exploit a rich deposit of high-quality Weald Clay to the south of the Surrey village of Capel. The outbreak of war in 1939 was bad news for brickmaking, as housebuilding effectively ceased and the workforce was swallowed up by conscription. Although there was some demand for bricks to be used in military engineering projects, there was little use for the high-grade ceramic blocks made at Clock House. By 1941, the Company was in liquidation and sold the majority of its share capital to the London Brick Company (LBC) to avoid closing the works. In 1945, the Company was wound up for good and the works were acquired by the LBC. Under LBC, production was substantially increased to meet demand from the recovering housing market and in the 1960s the factory was rebuilt to accommodate more efficient production methods.

London Brick was acquired by Hanson PLC in 1984 the works was refitted shortly afterwards to produce multi stock bricks under the Butterley and Capel brand names. In 1998, Clockhouse Bricks were used by three major exhibitors in that year's Ideal Home Show and by 2000, Clock House was be Hanson’s main soft mud production site, making around 42 million bricks per year.

The global financial crisis of 2008 hit the building materials industry hard, however: a sudden slump in housing prices meant that house-building ground almost to a halt and demand for bricks plummeted. In March 2009, Hanson announced a 'phased closure programme' which began later that month and led to the loss of 61 jobs. Hanson have since indicated that there is no intention to re-activate the brickworks or extract clay from the adjacent pits. Since closure, Clock House Brickworks has been in limbo, slowly being stripped of anything valuable while a lengthy audit determines the planning conditions surrounding re-use of the site. Plans for an incinerator ('energy from waste facility') on the site, bitterly opposed by local residents, were thrown out by a High Court Judgment in 2009 and the future of the site is now uncertain.'

It was glare-tastic inside from the opaque skylights!

Cont'd...​

 

[mookster]

Some from my January 2014 revisit with @Landie_Man . Not much had changed at this point but the downward slide was just gathering momentum. The access point I had used in November had been sealed up but we quickly found an alternate route inside nearby.

Thanks for looking ​

 

[Brewtal]

Great stuff mate, nice to see this one again. Place is an empty shell now and parts have been demolished. Yet they still have security... not sure why!

 

[Landie_Man]

Nice people shot of me there! Five years ago :/.

 

[Luke vaughan]

Good report and good place with lots of machinery