Maltby Brick Company

Maltby Brick Works

                                                  

                                        Maltby Brick from the air around 1991

It's now over twenty years since the Maltby Metallic Brick Co. was closed down which was the last brickworks in the Rotherham area.
Brick firms at the time also made tiles and sanitary ware - pipes, soil stacks and traps.






There's a long tradition of Marley Brick works being known as Maltby Metallic Brick - so called because the bricks were so hard that they "rang" when you tapped them together.

           

The works were next to where the new Maltby Police Station is now    ("new" as opposed to the old one on High St) 

The rail track offices are situated there now, on the right hand side of Rotherham Rd, just before Hellaby Bridge (which is gone now) Many remember playing there as children.

In October 1993 the works was bought by Tarmac. 

A number of houses on Rotherham Road are made with Maltby Metallic Bricks. They were harder than concrete, red on the outside and blue on the inside when broken, like engineering bricks. 

A lot better and a lot less porous than the London bricks that were used later.

Jane Higgins (nee Walmsley) remembers her dad Rip Walmsley, working there for 45 years, along with his brother John and were the longest serving workers.  Grandad, Jack Walmsley was foreman.  When they first started there, all setting was done by hand and thousands of bricks a day had to be stacked by hand and pushed into the kilns. 

School children visited the brick works often and with Roche Abbey combined they did some excellent  follow up work. 

Brian Chapman worked there for 14 years until it was closed, with Ibstock being the last owners and remembers the Walmsley family well and John as being "a great gent". As do Michael Keevan and 
Barrie Wilson Storey  who worked alongside his father, Bob.  Other Maltby families who worked there over the years were Trickets, Stubbs, Adams and Walkers.

Joyce Turner worked in the canteen providing good meals for the workers.

Pete and Barbara Walker worked as cleaners and Pete still came back to help when he retired.
Brian Chapman tells this story :
I was having a shower and Babs shouted - Anyone in ? I said yes, me, having a shower. She said, don't worry, I've got six lads and seen it all before - and started cleaning around me.

Sounds about right for Maltby people.
Good memories.