You don't know Stewartby? You should. This place - the very definition of post-industrial -was the home of London Brick, mass-producer of your basic self-firing fletton from the local claypits which dot the landscape round about. Just outside Bedford, it was once a forest of smoking chimneys. The 57ha site closed in February 2008, having fallen foul of strict new pollution controls.rnOutside the factory gates ('factory'here means a sequence of low brick kilns topped with tall, narrow chimney stacks, and associated industrial buildings) London Brick, later part of the Hanson group, built an ultra low-density workers'village arranged on garden-suburb principles and made, naturally enough, out of the local brick. Built between the 1920s and 1950s, complete with school, churches, shops, swimming bath and social club, it was named in 1935 after Sir Malcolm Stewart, chairman of London Brick, who had conceived it.
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