GIRL AS BRICKMAKER

Evening Star, Issue 20149, 13 April 1929, Page 10

GIRL AS BRICKMAKER

SUCCESSOR TO FATHER A WEDDING IN NOB FOLK. LONDON, April 3. The only woman in England who carries on the ancient craft ot hand brickmaking, Miss Margaret Wenn, of Crossways Farm, Jngiuim, Norfolk, was married on February 21. "When her father died a year or two ago the old brickyard in a corner ot Ids larm had fallen on bad times owing to the competition of machincy. She was induced by the necessity of making a living and love for the old craft to turn her attention to brickmaking, and became an expert. Then she turned her attention to sales, and motored with samples to local builders and architects, who welcomed her tine hand-made bricks. Her business is now nourishing, with an output of about 500,000 bricks a year.

The lady, whose lather was a mastoi of fox hounds, is a keen rider to hounds, and her husband, Mr Bennie Gibbs, is a notable local horseman. She is a tall, fair-haired girl in her twenties, with merry grey eyes and plenty of country colour in her cheeks. “ When mv .father died,” she said the day before” her wedding, “ I decided to earn- on the brickmaking yard._ Hie art ‘of successful brickmaking lies in the skill with which the coal is poured into the kilns, and in this I have the help of my good foreman, John Allard.” Airs Gibbs’s love of adventure and open-air life once led her to share the experiences ol !;• l.uriici', the “ woman Robinson Crusoe.” who leads a. solitary life as birdwatcher on the lonely island of Scolt Hoad, off the Norfolk coast. . Marriage does not interrupt Airs Gibbs’s work, and she lives with her husband in her own house at the edge of the farm. She drove her own motor car to church for the wedding.