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The lagoons and surrounding area have been used over several decades but have always been officially private land. |
The Arlesey
Brick and Lime Co. Ltd was in operation around 1858 and was producing yellow
gault bricks, lime and cement. The quarry now flooded, known locally as the
Blue Lagoon, was connected by a tramway to the processing works which fronted
the Hitchin Road in Arlesey.
The works stretched 2,000 feet along what was then the Great Northern Railway. Records show that in 1903 1,500 tons of lime and cement was produced weekly. The chalk filled wagons were hauled up from the bottom of the quarry by a steel cable powered by a stationary steam engine.
Photo G P Page 1996 |
They were then let down to the works by gravity, a man rode down and stopped them just before the Hitchin Road by spragging the wheels. A small steam engine then took them over the road and shunted them up an incline to empty them into the slurry pits. The empty wagons were then hauled back up to the pit by the cable. The road crossing was controlled by a man who signaled to the winding house by a system of bells.
The water filled pits have claimed 8 lives since the closure but the cement works also claimed a life when an employee fell into the driving cogs of the giant rotating tunnel kiln. It was stopped and left an uncanny silence in the village. It was said that the body fell out in three sections. Heated water flowed from the works in a brick lined culvert and discharged into the River Hiz after passing under the railway. The ditch still drains alongside the common and is referred to as the Earwig Ditch. I was corrected once by an elderly gentleman who said its correct name was Harry Wig's Ditch. Who he was I can only guess at. My father recalled when he was a child that the exit from the tunnel always had an eerie fog about it, caused by the heated water, and left many local children frightened of it.
During
war the site was used for munitions and when the old silo was finally dismantled
for development the bomb disposal squad was called in to make the area safe.
The ordinance was taken to the Lagoons to destroy and frequent explosions
could be heard from the village. It took three months to make the area safe.
The site was developed for industrial units and was called the Portland Industrial
Estate. The area where the silo stood has since been renamed The Crossways
Estate.
The economic growth of Arlesey during this time was significant. With the coming of the Great Northern Railway in 1852 and with it improved methods of distribution the subsequent growth of the brick and cement works was immense. Previous to that steam traction engines hauled the bricks and cement to where they were needed. Shefford just a few mile to the west had the benefit of a canal and where barges brought in 'coals from Newcastle' they took away 'vegetables from Bedfordshire'.
Looking back 130 years it is hard to believe that children in order to survive often worked in the quarries before that date. It was only in 1871 the reformer George Smith published The Cry of the Children from the Brickyards of England; it aroused the interest of the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury and in the same year came the Factories Act (Brick and Tile Yards) Extension providing for child and female labour to be regulated. According to a press report, ' on the first day of 1872, 10,000 young children were sent from the bricksheds to their homes and to school'.
The pumps in the quarry were stopped and the pits were filling with water in 1930 with the cement works finally closing in 1932.
Article by Geoff Page
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