Ahead of her highly-anticipated Society event, Professor Margaret Bennett offers an insight into her work as an oral historian uncovering Scotland’s past 

Having spent my childhood and adolescence on the isles of Skye, Lewis and Shetland, I’ve always been drawn to the sea. “Look what I found on the beach,” I’d report, bringing back pieces of coloured glass, pebbles, shells and tiny dead crabs.

But a walk along the shores of Fife was a new experience, finding weathered bricks stamped with names capturing my curiosity and appealing to my lifelong interest in traditional skills, folklore and local histories. 

As an oral historian, much of my research is informed by testimonies recorded during interviews with individuals talking about their local traditions. The recordings are made with their permission and excerpts of verbatim transcriptions are quoted within the written narrative, giving voice to people whose first-hand experiences may not otherwise be heard.

Curious about the old bricks with their Fife names, I wondered if my friend from Kelty, Mary Murphy, could introduce me to someone who had experience in a brickworks. Not only did Mary know ‘the very person’, but she also arranged a visit to record her mother, Marion. 

Life in a Mining Community: Marion (née Rankin) 

Marion (née Rankin) was born in 1928 in Waverly Street, Lochore, a miners’ row built in 1909 by the Fife Coal Company for the workforce and their families.  Like most women of her generation, Marion married a miner and, as her husband, Pat (Murphy) worked in the Lindsay pit, they made their home in Kelty. 

Marion at home.

In 2011, at the age of 83, Marion shared with me memories of her life in a mining community, including her time working in a nearby brickworks: 

Marion: “After we got married, we lived in Kelty so I got a job at Blairadam Brickworks where my husband’s sister worked – it’s closed down now. They’ve got a park there now, Blairadam Park, but back then that was just a wood, up towards the big hoose [Blair Adam House]. And to get to the brickworks, you walked through the wood, but it didnae take very long, maybe twenty minutes. Quite a lot of women worked there, but the bosses were men. We were supplied wi dungarees, but both of us were working out in the open all day so you needed good footwear – that wasnae supplied so we had to have our own boots, heavy kind of work shoes for standing all day, summer an winter. In cauld weather you wore your jersey under your dungarees, but funny enough, I don’t remember getting soaked very often. You just had to work, no matter the weather, you’d just get on with it.”

Margaret Bennett (MB): “How were the bricks made?”

Marion: “They were moulded in a machine and they had BLAIRADAM stamped on them. Mrs Adam has one at her door up at Blairadam House. And when the bricks came out of the machine, they were soft and black. There was a trolley sittin beside the machine and there was one girl at each side of it, liftin the bricks onto the trolley – you lifted them wi your bare hands. They were heavy an soft an black, an I suppose you could’ve made fingerprints on them when you lifted them but you had to handle them so you wouldnae mark them. Then they were taken from there to the kilns where they were fired. There were other girls workin there, an these girls went inside the kilns to build them up. Working in the kiln you’d get very warm – really warm, it’s like an oven. And they had a certain way o building them, an they had to be perfect or they werenae accepted – they’d have to re-do it, so it was quite skilled, you know. After that the kiln got closed – they boarded it up and the bricks were fired in the kiln. Then after they were fired, there were other girls took them out o the kiln and stacked them, ready for the lorries to transport them the different places, all over the country.”

Blairadam Brick Works, Fife (© HES)

MB: “Was there a tea-break for the girls working at Blairadam?”

Marion: “There was a wee bothy-thing that we used to sit in and have our cup of tea at the break time. We didnae have flasks like some folk have, but there was a woman there who made tea in this wee bothy and she went to the shop for you – she would bring you a biscuit if you wanted. And we’d all sit in the bothy for our tea-break and we’d blether away, have a laugh, aye… We didnae have a lunch break, just a tea break. You took pieces (sandwiches) with you to have with your cup of tea, corned beef or something. That was the break, just one.  At the end o the day you’d be fairly dirty, but the brickworks didnae have baths or anything like the pits; you just went hame in the dungarees an got washed. I’d be tired at the end o the day and then you’d have all your house-work … I don’t remember what the pay was, but it was quite a decent wage and after I had left the brickwork I got sent money that I didnae know I was getting, about sixteen pound holiday pay, and they sent me that after I had left. I left to have my first baby, but I was workin right through, tae a week or so afore she was born. She’s 62 now, so that would’ve been 1953.” 

Brick workers, Methil, Fife c.1900 (Courtesy of Friends of Methil Heritage Centre)

Scotland’s Industrial Past: Gary Nurse 

At one time, there were 16 brickworks in Fife, supplying bricks for underground construction in coalmines, mills, factories, industrial chimneys, kilns, weavers’ cottages, and miners’ rows, as well as ‘big hooses’ for factory managers and owners.

Retired brickworks employee Gary Nurse has been a volunteer at Methil Heritage Centre for over ten years. In 2013, Gary showed me round the heritage centre and allowed me to record his time working in another Fife brickworks.

Gary Nurse

Gary: “I worked at Wemyss Brick Company, which was established in 1906. It was owned by the Wemyss family that own Wemyss Castle. Up till 1973, the kilns were coal-fired and after that they were gas-fired. I was there till it folded in 2001. 

At one time there were bricklaying competitions throughout Scotland – mostly men, laying bricks really quickly. But it was two women who won it – two women beat the men! They worked really hard, as everything was manual in those days.  

Inside the kilns it was really warm, and some of the women would go in, no blouses, just bras, to get the bricks out. And you didn’t mess with them, because they could take a man out – they had muscles like Popeye! And women used to lift the bricks out of the kilns, eight hours a day or more. They never used gloves, just old bits of rubber tyres – a pad on the thumb and a pad across the fingers, lifting bricks. And they have to be packed a certain way to keep them steady and stable, with a thumb’s distance between. 

Women holding their rubber brick lifters (Courtesy of Friends of Methil Heritage Centre)

Then about 1973 it was all modernised and the Wemyss Brick Company could turn out 920,000 bricks in 5 days. If everything went well, even after the bricks were fired not a single brick or clay was touched by hand, it was all done automatically, even to loading the lorries… Wemyss Brick Company employed about 50-odd people for different jobs, but it closed down in 2001.”

Gone But Not Forgotten

Today, the only physical remains of the region’s sixteen brickworks are in the private collections of enthusiasts and discarded bricks like those I found on the beaches of Fife. Yet these material artefacts can only tell us so much about this important aspect of the region’s history and of Scotland’s industrial past. 

We’re fortunate that we can still meet former workers who recall the traditional skills involved in brick-making, who remember the wet clay, the brick-making competitions and the heat from the furnaces – they not only add colour to the narrative but also inform us about wider issues in Scotland’s past, such as working conditions for women and the loss of traditional crafts. 

As I listen to Marion and Gary, I am reminded why oral testimony is such a valuable part of documenting Scotland’s past and why audio-recordings are central to my life’s work. 

To find out more, visit Scottish Brick History online and Fife Mining Heritage or register now for the Society’s free public lecture with Professor Margaret Bennett on Thursday 12 December, online and in person in Edinburgh to hear more stories from Scotland’s past uncovered through oral history.

By Margaret Bennett, Honorary Professor of Antiquities at the Royal Scottish Academy and Professor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland where she teaches Folklore across the performing arts. 

With thanks to Marion (Murphy) Kelly in Kelty and Gary Nurse in Methil for allowing their conversations to be recorded for an oral history project documenting the industrial past of Perth & Kinross and Fife.  

Thanks to the Friends of Methil Heritage for the photos of the brickworkers and to Gonzalo Mazzei for his assistance.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this blog represents the views and opinions of the individual authors and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. 

Header Image: Courtesy of Friends of Methil Heritage Centre