Three Brickworks at Nowton or Welnetham or Sicklesmere
The sites of these pits and kilns are off the A134, Sudbury Road, between Bury St Edmunds and Sicklesmere.
A publication that helps to explain this concentration of Brickworks is "SCC Suffolk Landscape character - undulating arable landscape with parklands and ancient woodland."
"In the Hoxnian Interglacial there was a lake in a hollow on the surface of the Anglian till at Sicklesmere. The lacustrine clays that in filled it were exploited by a brick works in the 19th century while Roman kilns in the same area suggest an earlier exploitation of this resource."
This also means that these clays might contain evidence of early man, and John Wymer has suggested that four handaxes came from the Oakes clay pit, but exact provenance is not available.
The 1885/6 OS map illustrated here, clearly labels the area as Little Welnetham, but we do not acknowledge that name with the brickworks location.
The brickworks located on the map attached to this section have been variously described in official records as located at Little Welnetham, Sicklesmere and as Great Welnetham. One directory lists Andrews works at Rushbrooke.
All these parishes are closely linked and the boundaries may well have changed over the years.
From examination of the 1886 OS map attached it can be seen that there appears to be at least two, and probably three brickworks in an area labelled as Little Welnetham, which has no doubt added to the overall confusion.
The first of these three, which is examined on this page, is the Nowton Estate Brickworks of James Oakes.