THE COPROLITE INDUSTRY IN GREAT BRICKHILL, BUCKS.

 

In the late 19th century an unusual and short-lived industry started in the Brickhill area that brought wealth to landowners and employment to many local men. In 1873, a visiting geologist from Cambridge, Mr J.H. Teall, discovered a bed of phosphatic nodules in a sandy exposure on the slopes to the northeast of Brickhill Manor. These nodules had been worked in Suffolk, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire since the 1840s. Their value was in their high phosphate content, a factor which made them valuable as a raw material in the fertiliser industry. Manure manufacturers were paying up to £3.00 a ton for them. Ground to a powder and dissolved in sulphuric acid they produced superphosphate - the first chemical fertiliser. Contained within the deposit were also an assortment of Jurassic and Cretaceous fossils which attracted the interest of geologists. There was a keen interest in geology at that time following Charles Darwin's challenge to the established belief in creation. Museums needed specimens for their collections and many a member of the Victorian gentry had fossils in their glass display cabinets in their drawing room.

 

The deposit was reported as being found scattered through about 30 feet (10.5m.) of sand, but more abundantly in its lower layers. They overlay the upper beds of the Oxford Clay. He took them to be “coprolites” of a similar nature to those being worked at Potton in Bedfordshire. Coprolite, in its true sense, means fossilised droppings, from the Greek “kopros“ meaning dung and “lithos“ meaning stone. Many geologists disputed the coprolitic nature of the deposit and prefered to call them nodules but the term “coprolite“ was widely used across the Eastern Counties as a trade name. (1)

 

Mr Teall's paper on the find and its comparison with the Potton coprolite beds won an important prize from Professor Sedgwick of Cambridge University who had the chair of Geology and was curator of the Geology Museum. Obviously the find caught the attention of  the landowner, Sir Philip Duncombe. His land agent was brought in to deal with the financial arrangements for its exploitation and in 1874 the Wolverhampton manure manufacturers, Sir John Morris and Mr. Griffin, were awarded the licence. They already had coprolite workings in this area of Buckinghamshire. In 1871 they had entered an agreement with Earl Brownlow to work  40a. 2r.36p. of his estate in Edlesborough, Ivinghoe and Slapton. As this agreement was for the same £100 an acre they would have been pleased to win another three years later at the same price. The new agreement allowed them to raise the fossils from 14 acres, just north of Philip's Clump, part of two fields, High Thrift and Beggars Piece, on Galley Lane Farm. They were allowed seven years to work them paying £100 per acre, a considerable fortune for Sir Philip. In comparison, his tenant farmer, Thomas Belgrove, would only have been paying less about £1.50 an acre annual rent!  (2) A plan of the site and annotated copy of the first edition Ordnance Survey map of the area can be seen on the following pages.

 

Subsequent evidence shows that Messrs. Morris and Griffin took over “The Firs” in Great Brickhill where Henry Wilkerson their manager, probably stayed. As a coprolite contractor from Eversden in Cambridgeshire, Mr Wilkerson had expanded his business interests into Buckinghamshire in 1869 and soon became responsible for all Messrs Morris and Griffin’s workings. They were located in a narrow band along the junction of the Upper Greensand with the clay which ran southwestwards through the parishes of Slapton, Cheddington, Billington, Northall, Ivinghoe, as well as others in Bedfordshire. (3)

 

News about the discovery spread and a fellow geologist, Walter Keeping, shed further light on the workings. His paper in the Quarterly Journal of Geological Science commented that

 

“In a traverse through part of Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire last vacation, with the object of tracing the extent of the Cambridge Greensand, I was informed of some recently opened Coprolite works at Brickhill, near Bletchley. On a further enquiry they proved to be the red coprolites, a term applied by the workmen to the phosphatic nodules of the Neocomian like those of Potton and Upware.

The workings are seen on a hill near Gt. Brickhill, which is about three miles from Bletchley Junction, and the section exposed is about 30 feet deep. The deposit is a rather coarse sand. Unlike any workings known to me, there is no seam here, but the phosphatic nodules are scattered through the entire thickness of the section , and they are separated by sifting the whole of the thirty feet of sands, excepting where they are too much hardened by cementing substances. Thus separated, the coprolites are washed in revolving perforated cylinders, and any pebbles of quartz, chert, lydian stone etc are picked out when the material is ready for grinding. The whole process is the same as that carried on at Potton and Upware’ . (4)

 

The process of extracting and washing them is examined later. He reported phosphatised remains of saurians. Which species is not known but five dinosaurs were found in the coprolites in the Greensand. They included iguanodon, megalosaurus, craterosaurus, stegosaurus and dinotosaurus. There were fossil remains of ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus and pliosaurus, marine reptiles which swam in the seas in this area about 100 or so million years ago. Fossils of fishes, worn casts of ammonites and other mollusca were uncovered. Undoubtedly many of the best examples found their way into local museums and private collections. The coprolites had been thought to be fossilised dinosaur droppings but Keeping suggested

 

 the mineralisation of the fossils was due to decomposing matter, the carbonate of lime being replaced by phospate of lime; and even wood was thus mineralised, as well as bones and nodules of limestone. The nodules which are dark brown or yellow, yield from 30% to 50% of phosphate of lime. In the Gault, other bands of phosphatic nodules occur, generally black in appearance, but usually pale grey or buff in the interior.” (5)

 

A photograph in the Record Office shows a number of men and boys standing in a terraced pit in Great Brickhill. One can see the tools of the trade, picks, shovels and spades. (6) Ladders and plankways were also in evidence as well as two carts led by a horse on a tramway. Permission had been given to lay a tramway from the pits down the slope to Stoke Hammond Meadow, adjacent to the Grand Junction Canal, and the Aylesbury to Water Eaton Road. £5 per acre was paid for this land, part compensation to Mr. Goodsman, the tenant. (7) The tramway, according to one report, was a raised mound down the hillside, two to three feet wide, on which the rails were laid. A horse would have pulled the coprolite trucks down this using a rope and pulley system to prevent them going too fast and  to haul up empty trucks from the washing sheds by the meadow between the river and the canal. Aerial photographs clearly show the line of the tramway in the field, the site of the sheds and a local farmer recalled finding sleepers on the west side of Galley Lane. (8)

 

The actual works where the coprolites were washed and sorted were down by the tow path side of the Canal, adjacent to a landing stage just south of Bridge 99. This was on Mr Goodsman's land rather than at Mr Duncombe’s existing wharves just upstream. Being closer it would have incurred less transport costs. (9) Although their lease was to expire in 1881 there is evidence that Morris and Griffin won at least one further contract on Duncombe’s estate, most probably on adjacent fields.

 

Whilst the exact numbers of those employed during the 1870s has not been discovered, the photograph showed twenty three men and boys. Several sources have revealed some extra details of those involved. According to the 1881 census there was no-one described as involved in Great or Little Brickhill. Had the work ceased in April when the census was taken and the labourers gone back to agricultural work? Could those described as simply “labourers“ have been involved or were the many “agricultural labourers“ taken on by the farmer during the winter months and then went back to other work as the weather improved? The latter years of the 1870s were dominated by heavy rains and poor harvests. The rains would have incurred greater labour costs and the government of the day having introduced the Free Trade Act had allowed vast quantities of cheap meat and grain from the Prairies in the United States and Canada as well as from the Pampas of South America. Farmers suffered serious financial distress. Many pressed for rent reductions. Some went bankrupt and others were evicted for rent arrears. As a result their demand for superphosphate fell. Instead of paying £7.00 a ton in the early years of the industry prices dropped to £2.50 a ton. Demand for coprolites fell. Many coprolite contractors went out of business.

 

Adding to the problem for the coprolite industry was the discovery in the mid-1870s of a vast deposit of rock phosphate in Charleston South Carolina. Imports into this country drove coprolite prices down. Mr Wilkerson managed to stay in work mainly because Messrs Morris and Griffin's Wolverhampton works would have incurred high transport costs to get the imported phosphates to their plant. They maintained their demand for Buckinghamshire coprolites into the late-1880s.

 

Thirty year old Martin Chew of Stoke Hammond was the “Engine driver“ at what the enumerator included as “at the Copperlite works”. This may well have been local dialect or a spelling error. (10) The parish registers have shown that several leading figures had their children baptised in the local church. Joseph Eversden, of Little Brickhill, registered two children, the first in May 1882 when he was described as “Foreman of Coprolite Works’ and again in July 1884 when he was “Overseer of Coprolite Works.’ (11)

 

When the historian, Ivan O’Dell’s article, “A Vanished Industry’ appeared in the Bedforshire Magazine in 1950 it elicited several responses, one of which gave the account of two local coprolite diggers. It described how, in the late 1880’s, they

 

‘...were farm labourers at Sheep Lane who joined the gang at the “copperlite’ pits when the works first started in “Rammy mare’ field. (probably Rammamere Heath) The work was hard but the money was good, and “anyway, better than risking the sack after harvest or “turmut pulling,” and being out of work all winter.’ They worked in the pits for some time, perhaps until the seams were worked out, but they returned to farm work and both lived to a ripe old age.’ (12)

 

Another report in the Bletchley Gazette told of Jim Scott of Brickhill. Born in 1870 to a platelayer on the railway, he was engaged in the diggings in the mid-1880s and was

 

‘...employed as a young man sorting coprolite nuggets mined from Brickhills... [it was] washed and sorted at a works operating on Water Eaton side of Stoke House... Mr Scott recalls that it was possible to get fingers of crystal so sharp that they could cut glass and that highly coloured pieces met a ready sale to visiting gentlemen.’ (13)

 

By the winter of 1888 the company’s seven-year lease had finished. They were preparing a move out of Wolverhampton to expand in South Wales and ordered Mr Wilkerson to arrange the sale of the plant. The particulars were advertised in the North Bucks Times and County Observer.

 

COMPLETION OF CONTRACT

GREAT BRICKHILL & WATER EATON

About One-and-a-half Miles from Bletchley and Fenny Stratford.

˜To Engineers, Contractors, Builders, Farmers, and Others.

 MESSRS. CUMBERLAND and HOPKINS Have received instructions from Mr. H. Wilkerson TO SELL BY AUCTION IN NOVEMBER

T H E P L A N T, Which has been in use at the Coprolite Works on the Great Brickhill Estate; CONSISTING of a 6-horse portable steam engine, by Marshall, in good working order; a centrifugal pump, by Gwyne, with India rubber hose, a force pump, a 22-feet iron water wheel, a nearly-new stone washing cylinder, with tank, a weigh-bridge by Avery, a quantity of 4-inch piping, about 4,000 sleepers, about two miles of iron rails (16lb. and 40lb. to a yard), six tip wagons, a windlass, with frame, double brakes, and about 400 yards of wire rope; a quantity of wheelbarrows, planks, leather straps, etc. also the PORTABLE BUILDINGS, comprising three work-shops, three stables, a mess room, two offices, engine shed and two others, and post and rail fencing. This valuable plant is being sold in consequence of the completion of the contract, and it will be moved to convenient places for the purpose of sale.  May be viewed at any time, on application to the Foreman, and Catalogue had at the usual Inns, and of the Auctioneers, High Street, Leighton Buzzard.”  (14)

 

How successful he was in selling the plant, given the industry's demise, has not been recorded. There is some indication that, whilst the contract may well have expired, the seam had not been exhausted. In the April of 1889 the parish register shows that William Meacher of Great Brickhill had a son baptised and he was described as “Foreman of Coprolite.’ (15) Whilst this could indicate there were other works in the parish, he could have taken over from Mr Eversden. The electoral list the same year included Henry Wilkerson as still renting the coprolite works in Stoke Hammond. Maybe he was still paying rent for the field whilst the works were still erected but he was not included the following year. (16)

 

By the end of the 1880s Morris and Griffin had expanded their business with a coastal manure works in Newport, South Wales. From here they were more able to import the cheaper rock phosphates from the United States and North Africa. This reduced their demand for coprolites and explains the decline in the workings by the early 1890s. The 1891 census revealed no evidence of anyone involved in Great or Little Brickhill or Stoke Hammond.

 

During the First World War when foreign supplies were threatened by blockades by the German Navy an investigation was made into the possibility of reworking the local phosphate supplies but there was no indication this area was considered. When this happened again during the Second War, a team under a Mr. Oakley, produced a detailed report of all the nation’s potential phosphate deposits which included Brickhill.

 

The Brickhill deposits outcrop within 1 mile of the Grand Junction Canal and within 3 miles of Bletchley Junction. The old workings have direct access to main roads. The coprolite bearing sands attain a maximum thickness of 30 feet at Brickhill. The occurence of up to 6% iron and Aluminium Oxides would render it unsuitable for the manufacture of high quality superphosphate. Miss Bennett [Oakley’s assistant] determined the available P2O5 in this material, when ground to pass through a 90 mesh seive, as 6. 78% soluble in 2% citric acid; i.e. about a third of the phosphate is available.

Large workings half a mile N. N. W. of Gt. Brickhill Church; worked 1875-86 (and later?) by Messrs Morse and Griffens [sic] of Wolverhampton, The Firs, Gt. Brickhill. The workings showed a 30 foot section: red sands 15-20 feet, passing down into greenish-grey shelly sands, 10 feet. Coprolites are dispersed through the entire thickness of the sands; they are more numerous towards the base; those from the red sand are red-brown in colour; those from the grey sands blackish.’ (17)

 

His report suggested that much of the deposit around Brickhill remained to be worked, but the yield of nodules was probably too small in relation to the quantity of sand to be removed, and therefore discounted as too uneconomic. (18)

 

What was an unusual but small scale, labour intensive industry has been given little coverage in the local history books and this work has helped keep alive the memory of those local men and boys who worked the pits. What was done with the coprolite revenues is not known but many landowners renovated their estates, had cottages built and otherwise lived better. The higher wages of the diggers would have provided a stimulus to the local economy. Local businesses would have profited and the public houses undoubtedly got good trade. Carters and bargees would have seen an increase in trade but the decline of the industry helps explain the population loss of the parishes at the end of the century.

 

References

 

1.Teall, J. W. ‘The Neocomian Deposits of Potton and Upware,’ Sedgewick Prize Essay, Cambridge, 1875 p.43; O’Dell, I. J. ‘A Vanished Industry,’ Beds. Mag. 1951; Victorian County Histories, Beds. I, p.13

2. Document in possession of Lady Evelyn Duncomb, Brickhill Manor; Bucks. R.O. Ashridge Estate Papers P15/49

3. O’Connor, B. (1990) ‘The History of the Coprolite Industry in Buckinghamshire’, Topic, (Magazine of the Friends of Dunstable Museum) Vol.11, pp.9-21; O’Connor, B. (1990) ‘The Coprolite Industry in Buckinghamshire’, Bucks. Records, vol.32, pp.76-90

4. Keeping, Walter ‘On the Occurrence of Neocomian Sands with Phosphatic Nodules at Brickhill, Beds.’ Q.J.G.S. 1875, pp.372-5

5. O’Dell, I. original ms. ’A Vanished Industry,’ Luton Museum,1951, p.20.

6. Photograph owned by Mr. Arthur Bates, Aylesbury Museum; Michael Warth, ‘Great Brickhill in the Mid 1800’s,’ Bucks. Co. Library 1988 p.48

7.Document in possession of Lady Evelyn Duncomb, Brickhill Manor

8. Communication with H. Allen, Stoke House, Stoke Hammond; Aerial photograph 1983, used by Bucks. C.C. for Fenny Stratford by-pass.

9. Stoke Bruerne Archives, Engineers Log,1897

10. 1881 census Stoke Hammond

11. Great and Little Brickhill Parish Registers, 1882-4

12. Whiting, W. ‘A Vanished Industry,’ Beds. Mag. iv. p.86

13. Bletchley Gazette, 29th July 1950

14. N.Bucks Times & County Observer, Nov,3rd 1888

15. Electoral Register Buckinghamshire; Author's communication with H. Allen, Stoke House, Stoke Hammond

16. Great and Litle Brickhill Parish Registers, 1889

17. Oakley,K. op.cit. 1941.

21. Ibid; Strahan, A. ‘Potash-Felspar,Phosphate of Lime etc.’ Mem.Geol.Surv. Mineral Resources,vol.v.1917 p22; O.S. 6 inch Bucks. 20NE. (1895-6); Lamplugh,G.W. & Walker, J.F. ‘A Lower Greensand Fossiliferous Band’, 1903, p.234; Kelly’s Directory of Bucks., 1895,p.9, 1924,p.16, Towersey, Ford and Brickhill.