MySource:Kerbent/Hawthorn Peppercorns

“Market gardeners and brickmakers may have sold their wares direct to the public. Many people know that some of the small pieces of park land were once old clay fields, which sometimes became rubbish dumps or filled with water and drowned the occasional passerby. The first pockets of the industry were in Lower Hawthorn near the creek in the early 1850s, but even by 1871 there were references to disused clay pits, not only in the Mason Street/Simpson's area, but also on Victoria Road, and the Council did not really want to take responsibility for them. There seem to be few records about the early industry and the products like tiles and drainpipes, but the beautiful Hawthorn bricks of all colours-cream, brown, orange, pink, red and black, particularly the black with the purplish flecks, which are so popular now, were used extensively through Melbourne during and after the 1880s and 1890s. Probably most were mass-produced with better techniques by the bigger concerns in Upper Hawthorn and later South Auburn - which really date from after the run of the century. At first there were small independent workings, perhaps even in their back yards, but most brickmakers occupied small cottages owned by a few men, who also owned a few more little timber cottages of one or two rooms occupied by their other employees. They dug and baked the clay bricks near one clay pit for a couple of years, then moved somewhere else and dug and baked some more for somebody else. One of the first byelaws of the Hawthorn Council was intended to prevent the nuisance of the burning of bricks in kilns close to the footpath, but it added except for those which had previously existed. Again, in 1871, there was a further byelaw to control the burning of clay within 150 yards of the footpath as pedestrian compelled to go into the middle of the Road to prevent being roast4 or knocked down by men while firing, which should have meant the end of any small business. One sale plan in the 1880s actually had a kiln marked on Church Street near Brook Street.

3 Brick making areas from 1850s and 1860s. John and Henry Mould. Bottom of Simpson Place. Connell Street south side near Barton Street and north side near Elgin Street (where there are 3 little cottages occupied by stone breakers once in 1873) Small pocket near the Beehive Hotel on Barkers Road and both sides of Church Street-Thomas Crump and Henry Fry. Another near Belgrave Street-William Ellis Brickmakers lived in Hill Street and 'off' Simpson's Lane but may not have been working in t heir own blocks.” Source:- McWilliam, Gwen, Hawthorn Peppercorns, Brian Atkins, Melbourne, 1978