Each year the Historical Society hold an event for the community. The subject for the 2016 event was the various Trade and Industries that shaped our area and below is the detail from a series of fact sheets used at the event.

AGRICULTURE

Agriculture is probably the longest practiced activity for all the villages in the area. The Domesday Book records that Ibstock was 6 carucates of land (about 700 acres or nearly a third of the modern parish) were in cultivation by 21 farmers and that they shared 4 ploughs. Around 1150, a substantial amount of land in Ibstock was given to Garendon Abbey and was said to be ‘arable and heath some of which has recently been bought into cultivation’. By 1279 a village survey shows that 20 carucates (about 2400 acres, roughly the whole of the modern parish) was being cultivated by 50 farmers.

Farming was by the open field method where the land was divided into 3 large fields (each being divided into strips of about an acre which were distributed between the villagers). Crops were rotated and one field was left fallow each year. The tithe entries for 1670-2 record that the main crops grown in the open fields were blencorn (a mixture of wheat and rye), barley and 'pease'. Many villages were partly enclosed by private agreements particularly during the 16th century. This is likely to have been the case in Ibstock and when the village was caught up by the parliamentary enclosures in 1774 only the northern half of the parish remained as open fields. After enclosure, people who had held small plots of land often did not receive any compensation for their loss of ‘common rights’ eg. grazing on the common pasture. This inevitably led to increased hardship and some people were forced to look for alternative employment.

Amongst the larger farmers, the Paget family, (who were related to the Bakewells) had built a reputation for innovative farming techniques (eg drainage) and rearing fine livestock. Their considerable success was based on their lands at Ibstock though by the mid-19th century they owned thousands of acres in the county and had moved into banking and politics. Today there are about 10 farms of different sizes in the Ibstock parish some operating on a small scale together with other enterprises eg horse livery. Pigs were part of the local farming economy up until the 1990s but are no longer kept on any scale. Some of the ancient enclosure in the south of the parish was planted as woodland in the early 2000s and considerable tracts of land have now been built on.

BRICK

Before the start of mass brick manufacture in the 1840’s brick making was on a small scale operation using hand made bricks fired in a Clamp kiln. These bricks were used in many of the Georgian period houses on High Street. The site of the Ibstock Brickworks started out as the colliery although in addition to Coal, Fireclay was also extracted and a primitive brickworks was set up but bricks remained a by-product of the primary business of the colliery. After WW1 Coal mining began to become uneconomical and so in the late 1920’s the company decided to switch its focus to the production of bricks, pavers and clay pipes as bricks became a popular choice of the building industry and the operation remains the villages largest single employer today.

The process of brick manufacture is little changed from those early days. First comes the clay from the ground, this comes with impurities and depending on the quality sometimes needs weathering. Then comes the mixing and moulding. Handmade bricks are forced into moulds by someone whereas modern technology is employed for Machine Moulding where the clay/water mix is forced into moulds under pressure. Next comes the drying to allow as much free water to drain as possible. In modern bricks the colour is often produced by treating the surface with chemicals before firing. Some bricks were salt-glazed, salt was added during the burning process or the bricks are dipped into a glaze material or ‘slip’, giving the brick a shiny, ornamental surface. The final Firing stage is perhaps where technology has had the most advances and Ibstock is a company that has regularly sought to use technology.

The company set about creating a more extensive works by investing in modern equipment such as a novel tunnel kiln that fired bricks loaded on cars that moved through the kiln and these technology advances increased production capacity to nine million bricks a year. Although the shortage of labour during and just after WW2 curtailed Ibstock's growth for a while, by the 1950s the company changed its approach to sales by selling direct to the user unlike their rivals who sold their wares exclusively to building products merchants. The company continued their investment in further automation and 1959 saw work commence on a new 20-chamber Staffordshire kiln, bringing annual output to 41 million bricks, followed shortly by a fourth kiln increasing output to 56 million bricks.

By 1967 the company had six manufacturing plants and an annual capacity of 130 million bricks. Further expansion followed in the early 1970’s in the UK market and the Netherlands in 1973 and expanded further into Belgium in 1977 and eventually into the US market. The 1996 acquisition of the Redland Brick operations propelled them into being the UK’s largest brick manufacturer and 1999 saw the company acquire the assets of the adjoining Ellistown brickworks – itself an offshoot of the Ellistown colliery – to consolidate its position of one third of the brick capacity in the UK.

The company was valued at £376m when it was taken over by CRH and 16 years later sold to Bain Capital for £400m. Plans were put in place to build the most advanced brickworks on the original site at Ibstock and in October 2015 the company returned to the London Stock Exchange and Ibstock plc is now one of the largest building materials businesses quoted on the LSE. In addition to the Ellistown and Ibstock brickworks Heather also had a brick making facility which was also situated on the site of the villages colliery.

CANALS

As early as December 1781 proposals were made for a canal to link the coalfields of Derbyshire and Leicestershire with the Coventry Canal to the south so that it could be shipped around the country but it wasn’t until May 1794 that the bill finally became an Act of Parliament. Construction began and the canal opened in 1804 running from Bedworth on the Coventry Canal northwards passing through nearby Shackerstone, Congerstone and Snarestone toward Moira with a series of tramways constructed at its northern end to reach the various collieries.

The final cost of construction was around £184,070 and the main source of traffic came from the pits at Moira, which steadily expanded, particularly in the 1820’s, enabling the loans taken out to finance the canal construction to be paid off between 1820 and 1827, and the first dividend paid to shareholders in 1828. In addition to carrying coal to profitable markets in London, Pickfords canal-carriers operated on the Ashby canal in the early years, and a small local trade in coal and Ticknall lime developed between Bosworth and Hinckley. The canal was taken over by the Midland Railway in 1846, but remained profitable until the 1890s, after which it steadily declined. The railways provided serious competition for the entire canal network and in Ashby’s case the London and North Western Railway and the Midland Railway jointly opened the Ashby and Nuneaton Joint Railway from Overseal to Nuneaton in 1873. The canal continued to carry significant tonnages, gradually decreasing from 138,117 tons in 1862 to 33,329 tons by 1893.

On 2nd January 1918, there was a major breach in the canal when an embankment some 2 miles below Moira collapsed however the canal reopened on 23rd July 1919 but the northern most section was increasingly affected by subsidence from the coal mining although the total tonnage on the canal in 1943 was 43,733 tons. This did not prevent the 2.5 mile section from Moira to Donisthorpe from being abandoned the following year, allowing the Moira Coal Company to mine under its course. During this time horse drawn Boats and Butty’s were replaced by Diesel engine boats. Another 5 miles of canal were closed in 1957 and 1966 saw the Measham to Snarestone section close even though coal was regularly loaded there, leaving 22 miles of navigable canal southwards towards Bedworth.

This final closure led directly to the formation of the Ashby Canal Association so that no further closures took place and the between 1999 and 2005 the loss of the canal has been reversed with a stretch of 1.5 miles of the restored canal near Moira Furnace re-filled with water. This restored stretch includes a new lock built to overcome the problems caused by mining subsidence that remain despite the colliery closures. A further stretch was reopened from Snarestone towards Measham with plans in place pass through the village leaving the task of crossing the A42 the final major obstacle. In a twist of fate the path in Measham is to use a stretch of redundant railway crossing the High Street on an aqueduct towards a planned basin just off the High Street and on towards the A42.

COAL

Clay and Coal deposits in our local area had been exploited as far back as the Romans. The Tithe Commissioner in his report of 1838 remarked ‘The village of Ibstock is large and populous and the population has been much increased by a Railway which has lately come into operation opening the adjacent Coal Field to Leicester.’ In 1831, Curtis noted that the principal landowners included a 'Mr William Thurlby on whose estate there are collieries' and over the course of the next 90 years worked four different seams of coal plus the extraction of fire clay used in the manufacture of bricks.

The establishment of large scale extraction at the colliery had a marked impact on the population of the village, census records show the population count for the period up to 1861 was relatively static at around 1,100 although the number of people whose occupation was described as 'coal miner' or similar had been going up. Over the next few decades the colliery and brick yard expanded and the population of the village increased to 1656 by 1871, 2335 by 1881, 2937 in 1891 and 3922 in 1901.

The latter census records provide a hint at the many skills and trades that were employed at a colliery. Young lads between the ages of 15 and 18 could regularly be found under the heading of Pony Driver - they led the horses who pulled the wagon or ‘tub’ from the seam to the shaft. Their fathers and older brothers can be found listed as Hewers who worked the coalface with chisels and picks. Each section of the mine came under the control of a Deputy who organised the workforce on a particular day, each Deputy carried a stout pole and those in charge of the face would use it to measure out a stretch of the face and draw a chalk mark down the face to denote each man’s piece of the face to be worked. Pay was better underground but there were many jobs on the ‘Bank’ (above ground) where the coal had to be graded and sized. Other occupations that can be found are Surveyor, Sawer, Carpenter, Ostler whose job it was to look after the ‘ponies’ and Labourer where a man could be tasked with various manual jobs.

By 1921 the population of the village had grown to over 5000 as the colliery and clay business activity increased.  This expanding population produced a vibrant village supporting an increase in shops and other trades including 5 Shoemakers, 3 Tailors, 2 Drapers, 3 Butchers, Saddlers, Coopers, Wheelwrights, Blacksmiths and several Public Houses. In the mid 20th century many of the old jobs were replaced by machines. In collieries with larger coalfaces Hewers were replaced by machines that could strip the coal face, the coal was then fed by a belt which replaced the pony and driver but these new machines required qualified electricians to maintain them.

In Heather, coal had been extracted on a small scale as far back as Medieval times, larger scale started in the 18th century running for just 30 years when it closed in 1901 having hit a fault underground that made continued extraction uneconomical. Ibstock closed in 1928, again for economic reasons. A rationalisation in the industry closed Nailstone Colliery in 1967 but the eighties saw a flurry of colliery closures in the South Midland Coalfield with Ellistown losing both its pits in 1989 and Bagworth the last to close in 1991.

FRAMEWORK KNITTING

Framework knitting was once one of the most important industries in the East Midlands. It started in Nottinghamshire where William Lee of Calverton invented the stocking frame back in 1589 and the three counties of Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire would eventually contain over 85% of all the frames in the UK. The origins of the production of stocking hose by hand-operated frames can be traced to the 1640’s in Hinckley.

Following the Enclosure Acts of the 18th century and the loss of common grazing rights many smallholders turned to hosiery to supplement their income. In the towns, framework knitting required lengthy apprenticeships but in villages like Ibstock workers often included children and relatively unskilled people. Working the stocking frame was a strenuous occupation and required considerable physical effort. The knitter used both feet to operate the treadles and both arms to move the heavy iron carriage on its wooden frame. Good eye-sight was also needed as the machine required frequent adjustment. It could only produce a flat piece of material, which was taken off of the frame and seamed up, forming a fully fashioned stocking. Women usually did the seaming – often the wife and/or elder daughters. Children or women wound the thread from hanks on to bobbins and Framework knitting, as it came to be called, was therefore an occupation in which all the family participated.

In 1845 there was a Parliamentary Report into the condition of Framework Knitters. The domestic industry was said to be in decline and the conditions of the workers very poor. There were said to be 47 frames in Ibstock at the time though there had been about 150 within living memory. In White’s Directory of 1846, Ibstock is said to have ‘many stocking frames’. (The 1841 census for Ibstock showed 30 men and 7 women listed specifically as frame work knitters though there were probably more). Many other villages such as Bagworth and Market Bosworth had similar numbers of frames at this time and the census records show Heather had a number of machines too. The larger centres were Whitwick and Barwell and they had around 800 frames between them

Generally Worsted spinning, using long-staple wool, was already a well-established industry in Leicestershire. Nottinghamshire was said to specialise in cotton goods and Derbyshire in silk. The yarn, however, was not woven at home but obtained in hanks from warehouse of a merchant, or master hosier, who employed spinners to produce the yarn and who marketed the knitted goods. The knitter was therefore a piece worker, being paid so much a dozen for the hose he produced and entirely dependent for his wages on the master hosier.

MILLING

Hand milling of cereals into flour has been going on since Neolithic times and quern stones have been found in the immediate area. The quern stone is the lower stationary stone which was ground against the upper stone called a handstone. Mills were entered on local entries for the Domesday Book and it’s thought these referred to mills driven by water.

Windmills started to appear in England from the late 12th Century. A fixed structure would only work if the wind was blowing in the right direction, so the Post Mill, which could be turned into the wind, was soon developed. Windmills were often situated on a raised mound to catch more wind however the next development, a tower mill, occurred sometime during the end of the Middle Ages. The tower gave height with the sails pointed to get the most out of the wind revolving outside of the main structure of the mill which was often made of brick or stone, Bufton Mill was situated on Station Road close to the junction with Melbourne Road to catch the best of the Southerly winds. Smock mills worked the same but were timber construction.

Post mill’s had a large upright post on which the mill's main structure was balanced enabling the mill to rotate to face the wind direction. The structure then had horizontal crosstrees and angled quarter-bars. The body of the mill housed all the milling machinery consisting of a brake wheel on the same shaft as the sails, the purpose of this wheel was to transfer the power to a smaller gear at right angles to it often called a ‘Wallower’. From the wallower a spur wheel drove the millstone that ground the cereal into flour. Pictures often show a tail pole to the rear of the mill which was used to orientate the sails to the optimum wind position, the tailpole also provided a useful anchor point for a ladder to access the mill.

Most villages had a mill to grind corn, but this power-source could be turned to other uses such as Fulling mills for cloth-making sometimes known as ‘walk’ mills in northern England or ‘tuck’ mills in the South-west. Tudor times saw mills adapted into paper-making, lead-smelting and tanning but the most dangerous of these was gunpowder-making. The risk of violent explosions meant that powder mills were generally sited well away from towns and villages.

The Industrial Revolution provided more reliable sources of power than wind or water and saw the creation of large-scale spinning mills. Wind power is a renewable source of energy to drive used to drive modern day wind turbines, or aerofoil-powered generator to give them their proper name. As mentioned previously, water was also used to power Mills such as Help Out Mill near Shackerstone which can trace it's origins back to 1734 and was powered by the River Sense until the 1960’s and is believed to have been the last water-powered corn mill to have operated commercially in Leicestershire selling flour under the Sence trade mark. The name is thought to come from the fact that its excellent water supply enabled it to help out other mills in the area during times of drought.

PIPES

Clay is one of the most ancient piping materials, with the earliest known example coming from Babylonia approximately 4000 years BC. Vitrified clay pipe has a salt glaze applied to both the pipe’s interior and exterior surfaces and was the material of choice for a lot of sewers during the mid to late Victorian times it produced a very robust pipe but the downside was the pipe was very heavy by nature.

The combined Ellistown Colliery, Firebrick and Pipeworks was set up by Colonel Joseph Ellis in 1874 who had previously owned Nailstone Colliery Co. In order to attract a labour force the company had to build houses for them to live close by and the original settlement of Ellistown along Victoria Street, Ellistown Terrace and Wood Street soon grew alongside the expansion of the combined colliery, brick and pipeworks. Colonel Ellis died in 1897 and the colliery, firebrick and pipeworks along with the rest of his estate were carried on by trustees under Orders of the Court of Chancery until 1936 when the colliery and brickworks were separated into two companies however the Ellistown Brick and Pipe Company closed before the start of WW2.

In 1947 planning permission to allow clay extraction for the production of clay pipes at the works was granted and carried on as a standalone private enterprise until 1968 when Hepworth Building Products brought the works into its network of sites and began the next phase of growth with a series of innovations introduced to bring Ellistown in line with its other locations. Over the next 20 years the pipeworks diversified into the production of concrete pipes alongside it’s clay pipe business. The pipeworks closed in 1986 when the site reverted to its previous roll as Brick manufacture and planning records show permission was granted in 1988 for the erection of buildings to enable brick manufacture to take place at the site culminating in a total investment over £17m making Ellistown the most efficient works of its kind with the ability to offer as diverse a product range as customers demand.

In 2006 Hepworth sold the whole site to F.P. McCann of Northern Ireland. The Ellistown site now formed part of McCann’s extensive range of locations from Alnwick in Northumberland down to Littleport in Cambridgeshire supply a range of precast concrete products. All of McCann’s facilities incorporate a range of modern technological innovations from computerised batching and casting through to curing and handling systems of very heavy products to ensure less energy and resource is used to produce a product of equal or better quality. Previously wet concrete was poured into moulds and left for 24 hours to cure and then strip the mould, however the introduction of high vibration and compaction techniques and the use of an almost dry concrete mix (not dissimilar to a sand castle) the concrete is now poured, vibrated and compressed with the mould stripped in under 3 minutes. This has enabled the factory at Ellistown to produce over 2000 miles of pipes since it’s commissioning in the early nineties with products being shipped as far away as Kazakhstan.

Our thanks to F.P.McCann for their assistance with the detail above.

RAILWAYS

The Leicester and Swannington Railway had previously opened a station at Bagworth in 1832 but with the Midland Railway company taking over the line in 1845 they made a number of improvements, including replacing the original Bagworth station with a new one on 1st August 1849, it would eventually be renamed to Bagworth and Ellistown station on the 1st October 1894. This line had spurs to run extracted coal from Ibstock, Nailstone and Bagworth plus the quarry at Cliffe Hill. It wasn’t until the 18th August 1873 that the Ashby & Nuneaton Joint Railway opened a station at Heather, initially just for goods freight with passenger services beginning on the 1st September 1873, a year the name was changed to Heather and Ibstock Station. The Midland Railway jointly owned the Ashby & Nuneaton Railway with the London & North Western Railway.

The Railways Act of 1921 joined 120 separate railway companies into just four and both the Midland Railway and the London & North Western became part of a new company called The London, Midland & Scottish Railway otherwise referred to as the LMS on the 1st January 1923. In 1932 a new chief mechanical engineer, William Stanier, was appointed and introduced a number of significant changes in engine design. Tapered boilers, long travel valves and large bearings not only made the engines more powerful but also more economical. Over time the LMS pioneered various forms of experimental non-steam locomotives including the use of diesel locomotives that would eventually become common place in the 1950’s and 60’s. LMS numbers 10000 and 10001 were the first mainline diesel locomotives built in Great Britain at LMS’s Derby Works, using an English Electric 1600 hp diesel engine, generator and electrics.

Under the Transport Act 1947 the ‘Big Four’ railway companies were nationalised on 1 January 1948, becoming part of the state-owned British Railways and it was under their rationalisation that Heather Station closed. Passenger services had ceased on the 13th April 1931, it closed to parcels on the 2nd July 1951 and completely closed for goods on the 7th June 1954. A decade later British Rail withdrew passenger services from the Leicester to Burton line meaning that the Bagworth and Ellistown station closed on the 7th September 1964. The Shackerstone Railway Society was set up in 1969 to preserve what was left of the line and located to Shackerstone station in 1970. Finding one through line still intact they set about building sidings and reinstating the ‘down’ platform. In 1973, the lines centenary was celebrated with a small train of open wagons hauled to Market Bosworth. In the 1980s, the Line started a campaign to extend the line to Shenton and now runs steam and diesel-hauled trains every weekend from March to December and a summer mid-week service plus a Santa Special in December.

Our thanks to our freinds at Shackerstone Steam Railway Society for their assistance with the detail above.

STONE QUARRIES

Granite is another commodity reputed to have been quarried, from the outcrop near Markfield, since Roman times and small scale extraction continued until the early 1870’s when larger scale quarrying was started by Messrs Jones and Fitzmaurice of Birmingham at Cliffe Hill near Markfield. A gradual increase in output during late Victorian times had an immediate effect on the local economy. In addition to providing regular employment for local men, the purchase and maintenance of plant and equipment provided work for engineering firms starting up and growing in nearby Coalville and Leicester – all of which required the training and maintenance of skilled staff. A typical annual output of 630 tons of finished kerbs and 10,200 tons of broken stone was achieved, most of which was taken by horse and cart to Bagworth station 2.5 miles away for transit by rail. In 1892 a traction engine was purchased to help transport stone to the railway but the constant increases in volumes extracted and the inadequacies of the traction engines meant that in 1896 construction began on the Cliffe Hill Mineral Railway with the first locomotive working by the end of that year.

The pace of technological advancements would always have an impact on the efficiencies of extraction and in 1924 the Electrification of the works took place to drive those efficiencies further. During WW2 labour was in short supply and the company obtained permission to use German and Italian prisoners of war to ensure production could continue all be it on a reduced scale. 1959 saw the arrival of the first electronically controlled batching and loading system. Changes such as this plus the gradual switch from 25 to 50 Tonne loading trucks and the introduction of belt ways to take the stone between the Primary Crusher, the Secondary Crusher and on into Grading had an impact on the size of the labour force as the handling process became more automated but they in turn required more skilled staff to maintain them and with this automation came advances in Health and Safety of the workforce, always a major factor for any heavy industry.

The train network ensured the stone was distributed far and wide but in 1963 the location of Cliffe Hill provide ideal when the local sections of the M1 were under construction and many tonnes of stone made the short way to the M1. 1971 saw a new threshold in extraction when the quarry achieved 1,000,000 tonnes through the gates but that kind of volume meant that new reserves would have to be secured and in 1988 New Cliffe Hill to the west and nearer Ellistown opened for business heralding the eventual closure of Cliffe Hill (Old) Quarry the following year after 98 years. The moved secured production for a further 18 years before 2006 Quarrying ceased at New Cliffe Hill but that is not the end.

Today Cliffe Hill remains a busy site thanks to the diversification in the 50’s and 60’s into Ready Mixed Concrete and Coated Stone and here again technology makes significant impacts. Concrete is not a single commodity and comes in a range of different compounds as diverse as the requirements they’ve been produced for. The introduction of Low Energy Asphalt and the use of recycled stone where stone stripped from roads being resurfaced is put back into the process to produce coated stone ready for relaying are just two examples of how quality standards are maintained using far more efficient processes.

Our thanks to Midland Quarry Products for their assistance with the detail above.

OTHER ASPECTS OF VILLAGE LIFE

SMITHS

The Trade Directories from the Victorian era show every village had a Blacksmith, the skill of working the metal has been around as long as the Agricultural trade that needed its services. Before the advent of permanent Forge’s in the villages, travelling Smiths would ply their trade making everything from shoes for horses through to the ploughs that they pulled. 

COACH BUILDERS

‘A tree trunk went in and a carriage came out’ was a popularised saying for the Harratt coach builders on the site of Harratts Close off the High Street who appeared regularly in the Trade Directories for the late Victorian period. Another long standing business was Dronfields on Main Street in Heather next to the Crown Inn. Both employed skilled carpenters who could turn their hands to coffin making, wheelwrights and other joinery projects.

BUTCHERS, BAKERS - but no CANDLESTICK MAKERS

Analysis of the trade directories for the late Victorian period shows the impact on the High Street where the relative increase in wealth of the villages population demanded evermore diverse services on offer. In the twenty years between 1880 and 1900 Ibstock went from 3 Bakers and 2 Butchers to 6 of each. The 1881 directory did list some specialised shops such as tobacconist, druggist or watch maker but the equivalent Directory for 1899 listed many more specialists such as furniture retailers, hairdressers, picture makers, stationers, printers and tea dealers.

CHURCH/CHAPEL

The current church of St Denys is said to date back to the 14th century although the list of rectors dates back to 1160. The Methodist chapel on Melbourne Road was built in 1849, the current Baptist church on Chapel Street was built in 1878 although it replaced an earlier, smaller chapel. The Primitive Methodist chapel on Pretoria Road was built in 1881, although it is not in use now, and the Wesleyan chapel on Melbourne Road built in 1911.

Heather’s St John’s church also dates back to the 12th Century and was supplemented by two chapels, the Wesleyan Methodists built around 1828 and the Primitive Methodists chapel built around 1855, both of which are no longer in use. The church of St Christopher in Ellistown is a recent addition, built in 1895 around the same time as a Primitive Methodist Chapel near Ellistown Terrace and the Wesleyan Reform still situated on Whitehill Road.

EDUCATION

In 1792 a free school for 50 poor children of the Ibstock parish was set up by Thomas Clare close to modern day Harratts Close being replaced by a Public Elementary School in 1818 on the High Street at the junction with Grange Road, this was enlarged in 1848, in 1870 and again in 1892.  An Elementary Council School was built in 1907 and enlarged in 1911 with a Public Elementary School for infants was built in 1895 to hold 237 children.