About
The Brickworks Museum at Swanwick preserves the last steam-driven brickworks in the country, built in 1897 and left with its machinery in place when production stopped. It is not a reconstruction or a collection assembled elsewhere: the buildings, the engine, the shafting, the pug mill, the presses and the drying sheds are where they were installed, arranged in the sequence the work demanded, on the clay that fed them.
Brickmaking is one of those industries whose product is everywhere and whose process is almost never seen. Clay was dug on site, weathered, ground and mixed in the pug mill, pressed into moulds, dried under cover for weeks and then fired in kilns for days at temperatures that had to be judged rather than measured. Every stage needed power, and here that power came from a steam engine driving line shafting through the building, which is why the site matters: mechanised brickmaking of this period survives almost nowhere else in working order.
The works served the building boom that turned southern Hampshire into suburbs, supplying bricks for houses, factories and public buildings across the region, and the museum sets the machinery in that context - the men and women who worked here, the wages and the conditions, the clay pits and their wildlife afterwards, and the long decline of small independent brickworks in the face of larger mechanised competitors. Displays also cover the wider history of building materials, decorative brick and tile, and the architecture the industry made possible.
The museum opens for a season from March to November on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, with regular Sunday steamings when the engine runs and machinery turns, plus special events and children's activities in the school holidays. Adult admission is £9.50. It is volunteer-run, physically substantial, and best visited on a day when there is steam.
Categories:
Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Visit on a Sunday steam-up day if you possibly can - the site is transformed when the engine runs.
- The season runs 11 March to 1 November only, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays; there is no winter opening.
- Last entry is 15:00, an hour before closing, so arrive in good time.
- Wear sturdy shoes: this is a working industrial site with uneven yards and thresholds.
- Check the tickets page for current child, concession and family rates - only the adult price was published when this entry was written.
- Parking on site is free, and the M27 junction 8 is about five minutes away.
- Ask the volunteers to explain the line shafting; it is the detail that makes the whole building make sense.
- Children's events run in the school holidays and are worth checking before booking a family visit.
Highlights
The steam engine and line shafting
The heart of the site is its steam plant and the line shafting it drove, which is the reason the works is nationally significant rather than merely old. Before electric motors reached small industrial sites, one engine powered everything through belts and shafts running the length of the building, and machines were arranged to suit the shafting rather than the workflow.
Here that arrangement survives complete and in place.
On steam days the engine is run and the shafting turns overhead, and the noise, the smell of hot oil and the sheer physical presence of the transmission explain more about Victorian industry than any static display.
The pug mill and the clay preparation sequence
Brickmaking begins with getting clay into a usable state, and the museum preserves the whole preparation sequence: winning the clay from the pits, weathering it through a winter, grinding and mixing it in the pug mill with water to a consistent plastic mass, and delivering it to the presses. Each stage had to be judged by eye and hand, and getting it wrong ruined an entire firing weeks later.
Volunteers demonstrate the machinery and explain the trade knowledge that went with it, which is the part of the process that leaves no physical trace and was nearly lost when the works closed.
The brick presses and moulding shop
The presses that formed the bricks are among the most satisfying machines on site: heavy, deliberate, and designed to compact prepared clay into a mould at consistent pressure hundreds of times an hour. The museum shows both mechanised pressing and traditional hand moulding, and the comparison is instructive - hand moulding was quicker to set up and more adaptable, mechanised pressing far more consistent and less physically punishing.
Specimen bricks from the works, with their frogs and maker's marks, sit alongside, and visitors can usually see a brick made during a demonstration.
The drying sheds
Green bricks cannot be fired straight from the press; they must lose most of their water slowly and evenly or they crack, and so the works includes long drying sheds where bricks were stacked in open racks for weeks with air moving through. The scale of these buildings surprises most visitors, because drying capacity, not pressing capacity, usually limited output.
The museum uses the sheds to explain the rhythm of the trade: weather-dependent, seasonal, and organised around a process that could not be hurried, in an industry whose customers always wanted bricks faster.
Collections
The Brickworks Museum is a preserved brickworks of 1897 retaining its steam engine, line shafting, clay preparation plant, pug mill, brick presses, moulding shop, drying sheds and kiln area substantially in situ - the last steam-driven brickworks in the country. Around the machinery the museum holds specimen bricks, tiles, terracotta and decorative building materials, tools of the moulder's and burner's trades, company records, photographs and personal recollections of the workforce, together with interpretation on the regional building boom the works supplied.
The engine and machinery are demonstrated on published steam days between March and November, and the site includes former clay workings now valued for their wildlife.
The Working Brickworks
The complete process from clay pit to fired brick, through the original buildings and machinery.
Steam and Shafting
The engine house, transmission and the mechanisation of a traditional trade.
Bricks and Buildings
Where the works' product went, decorative brick and tile, and the architecture of south Hampshire.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.