Down Raglan Avenue, just before the bend.
Stop 3 – Of brick-workers houses, and the brick-pit of J.J. Peill.

Peills Pit in 1924 when it was being worked. Note geologist J. Rhodes, and wheelbarrow. At the top is the chalk pile along where Bourne Road is now.
Narrator: You might have noticed the long grass on the left as you came down the path. This is our meadow area, where the grass is only cut once a year, to encourage weeds – no I mean wild flowers – to grow. Even in the first summer, we noticed butterflies that had never been there before.
Phil: Now look back the way you came, and you can see the rear of the Victorian terrace houses of Havelock Road. When you get to stop 9 you can look back and see how similar they all are. The houses on Havelock road are older than the surrounding streets, and they were built for the brick workers. You can see the supervisor’s house, with the extra storey at the top (on the right-hand side of the Havelock Road entrance).
Jo: It is unlikely that these houses were built with the pit’s more expensive kiln-fired bricks. Normally workers housing had cheaper bricks make in a clamp in the middle of the road; This process produces a large number of over-cooked burnt bricks and under-fired bricks, which were then used for interior walls. Houses in Havelock Road have these over-fired and fragmentary bricks for the inside walls.
Narrator: The photos in the British Geologic Survey’s archive, taken in 1924, noted that the pit produced ‘white’ bricks from a huge pile of chalk at the Bourne Road side of the site. The white bricks can be seen fronting the more up-market terraces along Southlands Road.
Sandra: Eventually they had dug all the clay out of the pit, and then started extracting the sands and gravels of the Blackheath beds underneath.
Narrator: Brick workers were known as a rough bunch, and apparently no Friday night was complete without a hullabaloo and fight on Havelock Road !
Narrator: Continue down the made path until you reach the Homesdale Road entrance way and the next stop.