Rattlechain has a big brother! Barnett’s brickworks had other brickwork sites; one of them being in the Aldridge area known as “Barnett and Beddowes.” To gauge what it may have looked like before Albright and Wilson, (along with their Ministry of Supply conspirators), started to dump toxic waste I had a little expedition. There’s nothing more satisfying than hunting for some old quarry, though this one is still extracting marl for brickmaking, unlike the shambles operation that transpired at Rattlechain into the 1960’s.
Of course it’s fenced off and there are the usual warning notices, but from certain angles with the help of a great big tall person, it is possible to see the large crater in the ground. Forget the nonsense that Rhodia have tried to peddle about the Rattlechain pit being only around 22 metres deep, this is more like the depth that Albright and Wilson took on in the 1940’s.
I’m not going to pretend to be a brilliant local historian- I just like looking at old papers and connecting jigsaw puzzles, as the only way that history could be accurately recorded from the period would be with a time machine. There’s not really much on the internet that I’ve been able to find about this site but if anyone knows any more about the origins and ownership of it then I would be interested to hear from you. I don’t know if it was the original one armed bandit Samuel who owned the rattlechain pit that was responsible for this site, or one of his brothers, but obviously the Barnett name continued in brickmaking elsewhere.
Today it appears the process of marl extraction has moved on quite a bit. Of the two major operators in the area, Ibstock and Weinerberger, the latter still extracts marl from the old Barnett pit.
All I can say to people who live in this area is thank your lucky, lucky stars that a dirty great polluting chemical company did not decide to build a factory in your area- else you may well be starring at a toxic waste lagoon by now. What the future holds for this pit when extraction finally finishes is down to the planners as usual. Let’s hope history doesn’t repeat itself……