{"id":674798,"date":"2026-07-05T09:33:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T09:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/674798\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T09:33:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T09:33:16","slug":"clay-kilns-and-the-cost-of-survival-for-uk-tile-manufacturers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/674798\/","title":{"rendered":"Clay, kilns and the cost of survival for UK tile manufacturers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Pantiles, seen on rooftops across Britain, have a distinctive curved shape.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The machine Oldroyd is using dates back to the 1920s. Some equipment on site is much older and the work is far from easy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The most challenging thing for me probably would be lifting the clay,&#8221; she says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But she wouldn&#8217;t trade her job.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;m glad to be actually making history. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;When I think about this site and how old it is and we&#8217;re still carrying on this tradition and the fact that lots of the tiles, if not all of them, will be here for hundreds of years to come.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The work Oldroyd and her co-workers do today is part of a tradition stretching back centuries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Though clay roof tiles were introduced by the Romans, the English industry grew up in the eastern part of the country during the 12th century. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">By the early 1700s, pantiles were being made, with East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire becoming major centres of production. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Today about a dozen old school firms survive across the UK, according to the Roof Tile Association. William Blyth, founded in 1840, is among them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pantiles, seen on rooftops across Britain, have a distinctive curved shape. The machine Oldroyd is using dates back&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-674798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}