Former brickworks machine house, Porthgain
This large grey building, known locally as Tŷ Mawr (‘big house’ in Welsh), is the last remaining building of the Porthgain brickworks – one of only a handful of places in Britain which made bricks from slate waste.
From 1851 to 1931, Porthgain was a bustling industrial village and port. Slate and granite were quarried nearby both for export and local use, and from 1889 a brickworks and its two chimneys dominated the village centre.
The local slate was of a poor quality. For every ton of usable slate hauled up from the ever-deepening quarry pit, many more tons of waste slate were dumped in the sea. Quarrying here was a difficult and barely viable business, but in 1889 the quarry company was acquired by Manchester businessman Herbert Birch, who instigated a number of radical operational improvements.
A new 150-metre-long tunnel enabled trams (primitive railway wagons) to take the good slate and the waste from the quarry pit to the harbour, where the good slate was dressed and exported. The tunnel can still be seen today; it is the first one on the left of the harbour near the information panel.
Tŷ Mawr housed the machinery where the slate waste was pulverised, kneaded and pressed to form bricks. The bricks were fired in an adjacent Hoffman kiln, which was in the building with the curved end walls visible in the old photos. The kiln could turn out 50,000 bricks a week. A large Hoffman kiln survives at Llanymynech wharf, Powys.
The bricks were cured in drying sheds (where you now see the football field). The lowest photo shows workers outside the sheds. Most of the bricks were exported to the growing towns and cities of South Wales and the Bristol Channel. The old hoppers adjacent to the harbour are built of Porthgain bricks.
Brickmaking ceased in 1912. The kiln was demolished in 1926 and the drying sheds in the 1950s, along with the 30-metre-high kiln chimney and smaller engine-shed chimney. The Shed Bistro occupies Tŷ Mawr's former engine and boiler houses and the stump of their square brick chimney stack can be seen to the rear of the bistro. Tŷ Mawr is listed Grade 2 and is owned by the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority.
With thanks to Philip Lees, and to Rob and Caroline Jones for the old photos
Postcode: SA62 5BN View Location Map