from Trevor Davies
View the Brickmaking Exhibition on-line.
Now that the Brickmaking exhibition has closed, we can celebrate the interaction with the Emsworth community that has further enhanced the brickmaking story.
The Museum originally benefitted from donations made by Noel Pycroft when the Pycroft’s Hayling Island brickworks closed in 1988. A visit by his son, Ian Pycroft, who was included in the pictures in the exhibition, helped to clarify the terminology of brickmaking. Ian kindly pointed out where we had gone wrong in the descriptions. He has also offered the Museum a film of Brickmaking at his father’s brickworks.
His cousin, Aaron Pycroft, whose father ran the Pycroft’s Chidham brickworks visited the Museum and donated a book written by Graham Fielder and published in 1974 which describes the brickmaking process in great detail.
One visitor was very pleased to see his great, great grandfather mentioned as an Emsworth brickmaker.
We have also received donations of Rowlands Castle bricks that will enhance our collection. In particular, Debbie from Victoria Road spotted the borrowed brick that matched those around the Museum’s North Street windows and donated an identical one she had in her garden! We greatly appreciated her generosity, because the Museum now has an example for its own collection, after the borrowed one was returned to Bursledon Brickworks Museum.
The additional bricks have now been used to complement the display in the Main Room of the Museum. But we now do not need any more!
