Brick and Tile Making

Brick-making, although certainly this was less important in Ayton than in, for instance, Stokesley. Graves (1808) mentions that Ayton possessed a brick-and-tile kiln, and the name, Tile Sheds Farm gives a clue as to its location. This is confirmed by a deed of 1780 by which Thomas Postgate and William Hunter, bricklayer, both of Great Ayton, contracted to be partners in the business of the making, burning and selling of bricks and tiles for 30 years. The deed specifies that clay was to be taken from two closes called High Bulmer Hill and Low Bulmer Hill, together amounting to six acres. Presumably Postgate was the owner of these fields, which lie between the present Newton Road and the railway, immediately to the south of Cliff House. A Brick and Tile Yard is marked on the south-west edge of this area on the 1856 OS map, but has disappeared by the time the 1894 map was surveyed. Thus the Roseberry estate now occupies the site where clay was once dug up and burnt for bricks and tiles.

(An extract from a chapter of the book “Great Ayton – A History of the Village by Dan O’Sullivan”)

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