Old brickworks destroyed

Press, 2 April 1980, Page 2

Old brickworks destroyed

A piece of] Christchurch history was wiped out when fire roared through the 100-year-old Murphy Bros brick works at 100 Centaurus Road early yesterday. The brickworks was the last of many which were once dotted about the foot of the Port Hills.

Its towering brick chimney- is still a landmark, but the 100-year-old building which housed the production plant was reduced to a blackened tangle in the fierce fire, which broke out just before 1 a.m. The flames could be easily seen from tha centre of Christchurch, and many local residents were awakened by the sound of exploding bricks and pipes. Firemen fought for 45 minutes to control the fire, and had to deal with the additional danger of heavy machinery on the burning 'first floor of the building.

Eight pump appliances, and the Fire Service’s Snorkel unit and emergency tender. and three control cars were at the scene.

The fire is not being treated as suspicious, according to a Fire Service spokesman, but its cause

was still a mystery last evening. The cost of the damage is still being assessed. The works, knbwn as Murphy Bros or A and B Pipes, Ltd, is now a division of the big Auckland-based group, Ceramco, Ltd. The firm was still in business yesterday, selling bricks and pipes from its yard stocks, but the production side would be out of action indefinitely, a spokesman said. He said it was too early to say whether the plant would be rebuilt. In the meantime, the company would continue to produce pipes at its other plant in Byron Street, Sydenham. Another Christchurch pipe manufacturer said the fire was unlikely to cause a shortage of bricks and pipes in the building industry. “Most of the bricks- used in Christchurch are made in Dunedin, and other com-

panies should -easily meet the demand for pipes,”- the spokesman said. The last survivor of the Port Hills brickworks started before 1880 as the Farnley Brick and Tile Works, named after the Farnley Works in Yorkshire, according to the history, “The Port Hills of Christchurch,” by Gordon Ogilvie. The founder of this firm was Henry Bland Kirk, born in 1842 at Thorner, Yorkshire. After running a prosperous brickworks at Lyttelton, Kirk went into partnership with two other Yorkshifemen, John and William Austin, and started a bigger enterprise on 18ha of hillside at St Martins. In 1880, Austin and Kirk installed a huge Hoffman’s circular kiln, the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere. The kiln had 14 chambers, each capable of holding 25,000 bricks, and the 45m

chimney soaring above was then the tallest in New Zealand. It is said that a workman felt from the top of the chimney as it was nearing completion, ricocheted his way down through the scaf-l folding and somehow survived the fall — although he brcke both arms and both' legs. The works was closed in 1888 with the failure of the Colonial Bank, but Henry Kirk reopened it on his own account a year later. Alongside the works, Kirk and John Austin had each built a fine brick home in Georgian style. These houses and the nearby stable still give an unusual character to this part of Centaurus Road. Kirk sold out to Horsley and Company in 1898, and in 1909, a pew square chimney, which still survives was erected.

The Murphy brothers of Wellington bought the works in 1924, and ran it until Ceramco took over several years ago.