Until 1962 when the nearby Prestongrange colliery closed it must have been very noisy and dirty here but the brickworks continued operating until 1975 after making bricks for over two hundred years.  Now the only remains of the brickworks are a large kiln and the circular bases of beehive kilns where bricks, tiles and drainage pipes were baked in huge ovens. In 1937 a giant Hoffman Kiln was built with twenty four chambers which could bake 30,000 bricks at one time with over 5,000,000 produced a year. The raw clay bricks would be placed in each chamber then the kiln entrances and chamber divisions would be bricked up and sealed with clay paste then fired for fifty hours with coal added through vents in the roof. The safety procedures were almost non existent and working conditions very poor with many workers injured.  Apparently when they were removing red hot bricks from the kiln they used the soles from old boots to protect their hands. Now it is deemed unsafe to enter the chambers but I have recollections of going inside.  Perhaps it is possible when Prestongrange Museum is open during the summer.