By Kate Tobiasson // Contributing Writer
WESTBOROUGH – Brickmaking was an important industry in the earliest days of Westborough’s history. With much swampy land, sturdy foundations were important. Well-made bricks were vital to homes; they helped to solidify chimney construction and reduce the risk of catastrophic fires. Importing bricks from England and other areas quickly proved too slow and laborious, and local farmers began to develop the skills and facilities to manufacture bricks locally.
By necessity, many of the brick manufacturers in town were also farmers. They needed vast fields and a secondary income to support their families.
To make brick, the brickmakers first harvested clay from fields. When removed from the ground, clay in New England is stiff and almost unworkable; it was left out for months to freeze and then thaw with numerous turnings and tendings throughout the winter. Next, water would be added to the clay, and lumps tamped into submission. In spring, just as the farming season began to quickly fill the farmers’ days, the brick manufacturers filled brick-shaped molds.
The molds were lubricated first with dry sand or water, before letting the clay in the molds stand to dry and bake in the (hopefully) warming sun for weeks at a time. If the early spring season was wet, farmers found themselves with brick too soft to use. Finally, the bricks would be fired in a large structure, with temperatures kept just under 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
The tedium and complexity of brick-making meant that this manufacturing process required multiple hands. Each chimney for homes built in 19th-century America used several thousand bricks, and homes often had multiple chimneys.
The largest brick manufacturers in Westborough during the 19th century were located in what became known as “Brick City” located at 220 East Main Street. It was owned first by Abijah Wood and later the Gilmore family. Several buildings in Westborough were made with brick documented to have been manufactured in Brick City; 8 Flanders Road in 1817, the Warren Colony at Lake Chauncy in 1820, and the large Post Office Block at the rotary were all commissioned by Wood to be made with bricks from Brick City. In 1837, town records estimate that the farmers produced $1,160 of bricks (over $25,000 in today’s currency).
After the Civil War, the farm and brickyard were run by Thomas Gilmore and his son, Stephen. They were able to scale up the brick manufacturing thanks to their larger family. In 1872, they reported employing 20 to 30 men, making 1.5 to 2 million bricks each year. The property at Gilmore Farm grew to include five clay grinding pits, two brick sheds, a lumber shed, and two tenement buildings for workers.
The Industrial Revolution brought new, more efficient, and cost-effective ways of manufacturing bricks. Around 1885, brickmaking machinery allowed more diverse use of clay to be easily made into brick, nearly doubling the amount of brick a single factory could produce in a single day by 1925.
By 1906, Stephen Gilmore had retired, and the brick factory ceased to be listed among town businesses. Decades later, when building the development off of Haskell Street, Byard Lane got its name as a shortened version of “Brickyard.” Brickyard Lane was added to the Uhlman Farms neighborhood twenty years later, the last echoes of a once thriving and successful Westborough industry in a small corner of town.
