Midhurst White
| Midhurst Brickworks | |
| Traded as | Midhurst Whites |
| Industry | Brick manufacture |
| Founded | 1913 |
| Defunct | 1985 |
| Headquarters | Midhurst, England 50°59′00″N 0°45′07″W / 50.9832°N 0.7520°WCoordinates: 50°59′00″N 0°45′07″W / 50.9832°N 0.7520°W |
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Key people
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Lord Cowdray Benjamin Cloke |
Midhurst Brickworks is a former brickworks situated to the south-west of Midhurst, West Sussex in England. The works were sited close to the (now closed) Midhurst Common railway station on the Midhurst to Petersfield (L.S.W.R.) railway line. The works were established in 1913, on land owned by the Cowdray Estate, and closed in 1985. From 1938, the company traded as Midhurst Whites after their main product, white bricks made of sand and lime, which was obtained from the Cocking Lime Works, 5 km (3 mi) south.
The works were established in 1913 by S. Pearson & Son, a firm controlled by the Cowdray family, on land owned by Lord Cowdray. S. Pearson & Son traded as public works engineers and had been involved in the construction of Dover Docks, the Blackwall Tunnel, the East River Tunnels in New York and Vera Cruz Docks in Mexico.
Initially, sand for the bricks was extracted from a sand pit close to the works on Midhurst Common. Following the First World War, the brickworks were closed until, in 1925, the works were sold to Robert Dunning and Eli Searle, who had acquired the Cocking Lime Works the previous year. Dunning was a brick-maker from Wales, who upgraded the plant at Midhurst and Cocking, enabling the lime works to produce a fine ground lime for use in brick-making.
In 1926, the brickworks and lime works, now trading as the Midhurst Brick & Lime Co. Ltd., were acquired by Benjamin Cloke for £6,000. Cloke embarked on a major expansion programme, both at Cocking and Midhurst. At the brickworks, a 25.9 m (85 ft) high chimney was erected and £30,000 was spent on new plant, including an excavator and locomotive, two Sutcliffe Duplex brick presses, two new 160 psi and a Lancashire boiler. Cloke had hoped to acquire a contract to supply bricks to London County Council but the contract failed to mature and eventually Cloke was forced to sell off a stock of 4 million bricks made especially for the expected London contract to a local builder for £1 per 1000; these were used in the construction of new homes at Park Crescent in Midhurst.
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