Feeder Bin

The feeder bin is where the process started. Raw clay came in, and from here it worked its way through the grinding pans, the brick presses, and eventually into the Hoffman kiln's 18 chambers, where bricks moved continuously through heating, firing, and cooling. By the time this photograph was made in 2011, the bin had been standing idle for over two decades, its metal surfaces given over entirely to rust, its interior swallowed by shadow. The brickworks at Box Hill operated under a succession of names across more than a century of production. The Haughton Park Brick Company Ltd issued its prospectus in 1884, proposing to produce machine and hand-made bricks, tiles, earthenware, and porcelain on a 30-acre site at the corner of Elgar and Canterbury Roads. The company declared its first dividend in 1890 and suspended production two years later as the colony-wide depression took hold. The site lay dormant until around 1911, when brick production resumed. By 1913 the operation had become the Standard Brick and Tile Co. Ltd, with an 18-chamber Hoffman patent kiln and plans for four brick presses. The Co-operative Brick Company took over in 1938, closed the works during the Second World War in 1942, and reopened in 1946. In 1952 the plant was converted from steam to electricity. Brick and Pipe Industries acquired the Co-operative Brick Company in 1966, bringing Box Hill under the ownership of what had become Australia's largest brickmaking operation. The works closed permanently in August 1988. The Victorian Heritage Register listed the site as VHR H0720, gazetted on 20 September 1989, recognising it as a rare and unusually intact brickmaking plant of the early twentieth century, and the last historic remnant of the brick-producing belt that once stretched between Hawthorn and Mitcham. The feeder bin, the grinding pans, the kiln chambers and the clay mill building survived. This photograph records the bin as it stood in 2011: rust, shadow, and silence where the work once began.