The Hidden History Beneath Our Parks

 

"The Hidden History Beneath Our Parks: Portslade’s Victorian Brick Pits Here you can listen to a Podcast style discussion about the article

While specific, complete ownership records for every brick pit in the Vale Road/Victoria Road area are often buried in historical land registry documents (which are not easily searchable online), online resources do provide a clear picture of the context and the key players in Portslade's booming brick and gravel industry in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Here is what is recorded online regarding the ownership and context of the Portslade pits:

🏭 The Industrial Context: A Boom in Building

The existence of the gravel and brick pits was directly tied to the massive urban expansion of Brighton and Hove in the Victorian era (the latter half of the 19th century).

• Fueling Construction: The need for building materials—specifically clay and sand for brick-making, and flint and coombe rock for road repair and foundations—transformed the landscape of Portslade. The areas that became Victoria Park and Vale Park are explicitly mentioned as being situated on former brick and gravel fields.

• Location: The pits were concentrated in the north of the main coastal strip, near the railway line. The specific flint pits in the Vale Park area were bordered by the railway on the north, St Andrew's Road on the south, Church Road on the west, and Norway Street on the east.

👤 Key Individuals and Families

While a single company name for the Vale Road pit is not consistently cited, historical records highlight that the industry was part of a shift in land ownership, often involving local entrepreneurs.

• Early Brick Makers: The census of 1861 for the area (specifically Station Road/The Drove) recorded the presence of four brick-makers, including the well-known James Clayton, living and working near the pits. This suggests the brick-making industry was active in the area from the mid-19th century.

• Wealthy Landowners: Like most of the area, the land was often part of larger estates before being sold or leased for industrial use. Land was considered more valuable if it contained clay that could be excavated for brick making, providing a strong financial incentive for landowners and tenant farmers to permit the digging of the pits.

📜 Land Use and Legacy

The most prominent ownership aspect available online relates to the subsequent repurposing of the land:

• Vale Park: The land of Vale Park was initially used for the extraction of sand and flints. It was later acquired and converted into a public recreation area, demonstrating the transition from private industrial ownership to public municipal ownership (now managed by Brighton & Hove City Council).

• Victoria Park/Recreation Ground: Similarly, Victoria Park (where the famous Ice Age finds were made) was built on previous brick fields and is now a public recreational area under local authority management.

In summary, the brick pits were owned or leased by various individuals and small industrial operators (like James Clayton) during the mid-to-late 19th century, driven by the intense demand for construction materials in the growing towns of Brighton and Hove. The names of the specific brick-making firms are not as widely digitised as the archaeological finds themselves, but the context points to local entrepreneurs and landowners capitalising on the valuable subsoil.

James Clayton was a notable figure in the local industry that utilised the very brick and gravel pits where the prehistoric finds were made.

👤 James Clayton: Brick-Maker and Resident

Occupation: James Clayton was recorded specifically as one of four brick-makers operating in the Portslade area during the mid-19th century.


Location and Time: He was listed in the 1861 Census as living in the few dwellings situated in The Drove (an area now associated with Station Road). At this time, he was already described as the "well-known James Clayton," indicating he was a prominent and established figure in the local brick trade.


Industrial Context: The brick-making industry in this location, often referred to as Copperas Gap (Portslade), was active much earlier than 1861, as a directory from 1832 also lists a John Clayton as a brick maker in the Copperas Gap area. This suggests the Clayton name was associated with Portslade's brick industry for decades.

In short, James Clayton was one of the local entrepreneurs driving the industrial activity that defined the landscape of Portslade in the mid-19th century, utilising the clay and gravel that later yielded significant archaeological discoveries.

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The Giants of the Ice Age: Portslade’s Deepest History

While the Victorian era saw a boom in surface-level industrial activity, the deep excavation of Portslade’s gravel and brick pits—specifically those in the areas that became Victoria Recreation Ground and Vale Park—revealed a much older story. These workings reached into sediment layers from the Pleistocene Epoch (the Ice Ages), uncovering fossil evidence of a world that existed 200,000 or more years ago.

• The Woolly Rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis): The most extraordinary discovery was the remains of the Woolly Rhinoceros. Crucially, these bones were found alongside Acheulean stone hand-axes, proving that early human populations were present in Portslade, utilising flint tools while these massive, cold-adapted giants still roamed the open grasslands.
  
  

Mega-Fauna of the Brick-Fields: In addition to the rhinoceros, excavations in the brick-fields of Victoria Park uncovered the bones of mammoths and the foot bones of an ancient bear. These finds paint a vivid picture of a stark, frozen landscape very different from the urban parks we walk through today66.

The Evolution of the Flint Workers

As the Ice Age ended and the climate warmed, Portslade continued to be a hub of human activity due to its plentiful flint supply. The pits around Vale Road have yielded a timeline of sophisticated tool-making:

• Neolithic Period (c. 4000–2500 BC): Finely flaked, symmetrical leaf-shaped arrowheads represent the area's earliest true hunting points8888.
  
  

• Early Bronze Age (c. 2500–1500 BC): The introduction of barbed and tanged arrowheads showed an advancement in technology, allowing for better attachment to wooden shafts9999.
  
  

• Metalworking Mastery: The discovery of palstaves (bronze axe-heads with a distinctive stop-ridge) marks the moment local communities transitioned from stone to metal tools10101010.
  
  

Where the Treasures Reside

Today, these finds are preserved in several key collections:

• The Booth Museum of Natural History (Hove): Home to the Ice Age mammal remains, including the Woolly Rhinoceros and mammoth bones.
  
  

• Brighton Museum & Art Gallery: Holds the human-made treasures, such as the Acheulean hand-axes and Bronze Age implements..
  
  

• The Keep: Archives the original excavation reports and photographs that document the discovery of this "time capsule" beneath Portslade.