Standing beside a machine older than her grandfather, Tessa Oldroyd feeds clay through a clanky mechanism driven by iron cogs that have been turning for more than a century. In her hands, Britain's tile-making past is very much alive. But a dozen miles away, its future is being reshaped.
The clay, most of which is dug from the Humber Estuary, arrives in heavy blocks at William Blyth, a small firm in Barton-upon-Humber, North Lincolnshire, that has been making roof pantiles for generations. Oldroyd – the only woman in a male-dominated workplace of 24 workers – explains how one block is placed into the machine, affectionately nicknamed “the stupid”, before the cogs turn and “squeeze the clay through a plate, extruding it into tiles”, which are then baked in its coal-fired kiln.
“Tessa Oldroyd works at a 186-year-old tile site as traditional firms face economic pressures.”
“The most challenging thing for me probably would be lifting the clay,” she says. “I'm glad to be actually making history. When I think about this site and how old it is and we're still carrying on this tradition and the fact that lots of the tiles, if not all of them, will be here for hundreds of years to come.”
The machine Oldroyd uses dates from the 1920s, but some equipment on site is much older. That tradition stretches back centuries: clay roof tiles were introduced by the Romans, but the English industry grew up in the eastern part of the country during the 12th century. By the early 1700s, pantiles were being made, with East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire becoming major centres of production. Today about a dozen old school firms survive across the UK, according to the Roof Tile Association. William Blyth, founded in 1840, is among them.
In recent years, traditional manufacturers in the British ceramics sector have faced pressures including rising energy prices, higher labour costs and competition from cheaper imports. The 200-year-old Denby Pottery fired its final pieces earlier this month before permanently blowing out its kilns, prompting the chancellor to announce a £120m support package to help the sector.
“It's an incredibly difficult situation at the moment,” says Noble Francis, economics director at the Construction Products Association. Energy alone can account for up to a third of costs in cer…
