Allen Brick Works

Went for a walk today and found this…

Ive been doing a bot of exploring in the area where I live recently and have found a few amazing places…More to tell on the others but today I took half a day holiday and took the boys out to the Allen Brick Works. It has to be seen to be believed really. It is hidden away in the woods nearby, and what a find!

Mostly now it is all falling down and covered from top to bottom in graffiti, but there are still many signs of what once existed there. We left a few tags (hastily sprayed symbols mostly – though my eldest did a quite splendid classic cock and balls) and will be going back for sure as there is still a lot to see.

The place was a glazed brick manufacturers established by Henry Victor Allen (1887-1960), when he took over the Halifax Glazed Brickworks in the Walterclough Valley. He converted the works to manufacture refractory bricks (glazed bricks able to withstand high temperatures, generally used to line kilns, furnaces and fireplaces etc). Their Selfrac bricks were world famous. The works were later taken over by G R Stein, who also took over other brickworks in the area, and eventually closed in the 1960’s.

Check out the pictures below of it today…

Author: Michael

Husband, dad,(ex)programmer, comic collector and proud Yorkshireman. I have no idea why im here or why im writing but i rather enjoy it. no great fan of punctuation;

19 thoughts on “Allen Brick Works”

  1. A photographer’s delight! Cyberspouse and his photography friends have been to a few secret derelict places. In a few centuries time some archaeologist will be studying strange images and concluding the brickworks was a temple.

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  5. That’s amazing and the colors – we have a few photographic groups that go to Detroit for the sole purpose of going into dilapidated buildings that are vacant for many decades, overgrown grass and full of colorful graffiti on the facade. It is a photographer’s delights. The old Michigan Central Depot train station was one such destination for many years, then Ford Motor Company bought this shell of a building about two years ago and determined it was architecturally sounds, so when it ready to open for their corporate bigwigs, it will once again be like its former glory (the trains passed right through the building) and it was like Grand Central Station in New York City.

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  7. Yes, in the case of the old train station, I was going to send you a link, but the historical aspect of the story was way too long … I just wanted to show you the contrast between the decay and how it looked before they started putting the building back in order after decades of decay. When we hosted the Superbowl XL here in Detroit, the building was so bad and they didn’t want the international media seeing it and commenting on it, so they had a false facade put on, like a screenprint that fit over the front for the aerial shots. There are many abandoned buildings in Detroit – last year some kids were exploring an old building and one stepped into what he thought was an old elevator and fell down and was killed.

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  13. Yes Michael and in that show, you probably saw the Detroit Riots were in the Summer of 1967. On the 50th anniversary of that event, (where there was rioting, burning of buildings and general destruction over five days and considered one of the deadliest and most destructive riots in the history of America), unbelievably there are still parts of Detroit, not that far from downtown, where vacant and burned-out shells of buildings still stand. No attempt to tear them down! When we had the Super Bowl here in 2006, the police went around and collected all the homeless people and kept them inside and off the streets so the media which were streaming through the downtown area, would not see/comment on it. The day after, the homeless were turned loose once again. I went to school and worked in the City of Detroit from 1976 to 2009.

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  17. Hey Michael🙋‍♀️ This is a very interesting visual. What ever areas u roam ur finding delightful expressions posted about. Sometimes it’s really awesome art I see on railway cars..,also under bridges that have a stream. Happy exploring 🌻

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