Webster's Bricks

Until it gets struck by lighting, lol.

Hello to you both. I love the fact that you maintain contact, NormK. There is such a depth to any situation when you are there. Almost therapeutic I am sure. I value my contacts with former staff. I sometimes visit my trainspot sites like Coventry railway station & even though they are now void of the people that I once new, I still get a buzz' as if nothing had changed. Thank you for your posts.

IslandCafe. You say Norman Wisdom was a part owner of Websters, let me clarify things a bit. Norman Wisdom was in the brickmaking industry, he owned his own brickworks at Longford, it was situated at the rear of Grimleys the haulage company. He visited Webster's a lot of years ago and one of Hemmings' directors said you could not talk seriously to him because everything turned into a joke. I think his works was called Charity Banks.

I have just researched this and it appears his brickworks was in Bedworth and not Longford.

Although it's slightly outside Coventry, forumites may be interested in this part of the topic, so there's a link here : Norman Wisdom

Hi I liked that. Norman Wisdom did have connections with Coventry. He was the guest that opened a music shop in Foleshill which he had an interest in. Sadly the business only lasted a few years. I have gone off thread, but a lovely post, Midland Red.

Am not a "brickspotter" - honest! Old bricks

Hi A lovely display of bricks. I am not a brick spotter either, but costing jobs for civil engineers meant that I did learn some aspects of bricks & brickwork. Thank you

Nice to see a brick from Cherry Orchard! In 1971 I and my wife were caught up in the first housing boom, within 3 weeks of selling our first house the prices rocketed so that we could not even afford to buy it back. We managed to find a piece of ground in Rugby and bought it the day before the Council took them off the market for repricing. Webster's could not supply us with bricks (18 months waiting list) but the owner of Cherry Orchard took pity on us and supplied us with all the bricks we needed. The ones for the foundations were known as "bottles and bananas" because they were the ones near the side of the kiln and got too hot. The bricks buckled like bananas and shattered like glass when hit with a hammer but were half the price of the good ones. The house took four years to build, weekends and holidays and I worked night shift. The price = £20 a thousand and that was the good ones. Transport was £35 and held 3,500 bricks (the owner always made sure that 4,000 bricks were on each load) price per load £105. What a man and wife team the owner was, could not have done it without them. I was 23 and my wife 21 when we started building, she was the hod-carrier, lol.

Got a bit of inside information for you. I just called at the brickworks and they are in the hands of the receivers and when present brick stocks are sold the gates will be closed for good so that's the end of brickmaking in the area.

Whilst taking the camera for a walk on Sunday morning, I came across a fine modern wall, fine that is apart from one brick on the top row being missing In its place was this!

Photos taken recently at the site : Websters Bricks

Those are an excellent set of photographs of what must be the last bit of Coventry's industry, and the closest one to the city centre I can think of.

Thanks for posting these pictures, they're great! I'd love to have a brick from that chimney when they knock it down. Spent many an hour staring out the bedroom window of my first student digs watching the smoke pour from that chimney. Will be sad to see it go.

Hello mn757, Hi all Whilst visiting my builder (I should say retired builder) today, & with the delight of our breakfast meet in my mind, I thought you might like this pic. Hayden wastes nothing. I hope you like. I do wish that he & his wife would come on here as their combined contribution would be vast. I live in hope on that.