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. She is the only woman among 24 workers at William Blyth in Barton-upon-Humber, North Lincolnshire, a site that dates back to 1840. The clay, dug from the Humber Estuary, is stacked on pallets in the yard before being placed into a machine nicknamed “the stupid”, which squeezes it through a plate to extrude tiles. These are then baked in a coal-fired kiln, just as roof pantiles have been made for generations.
“The most challenging thing for me probably would be lifting the clay,” Oldroyd 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.”
“At 186-year-old William Blyth, Tessa Oldroyd keeps traditional tile making alive amid industry pressures.”
William Blyth is one of about a dozen traditional tile-making firms surviving in the UK, according to the Roof Tile Association. The industry has deep roots: 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, and by the early 1700s pantiles were being made in East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Yet today, traditional manufacturers face rising energy prices, higher labour costs and competition from cheaper imports.
The pressures are stark. Denby Pottery, a 200-year-old firm, 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, noting that energy alone can account for up to a third of costs.
Oldroyd’s work – feeding clay through a machine from the 1920s, surrounded by equipment from the 1800s – is a fragile link to a centuries-old craft. The question is whether that link will hold as economic pressures reshape the industry.