[Dunball Steam Pottery Tile & Brick Company, Downend, Puriton, Somerset.] Victorian manuscript 'Dunball Y[ar]d Inventory' for sale, headed 'List of Working Machinery Plant Tools and effects, included with the purchase of the works. | Schedule no 2'.

6pp., foolscap 8vo. On two bifoliums attached with metal clasp. In very good condition, on lightly-aged paper. Docketed 'Dunbar Yd | Inventory' and headed 'The Dunball Steam Pottery Tile & Brick Company. | List [...]'. The inventory gives a clear impression of the extensive nature of the business. It is divided into 22 sections (the first 19 numbered), giving the contents of: Tile Shed (2); Boiler House; Engine House; Brick House; Smiths Shop; Carpenters Shop; Grease House; Store Room; Pipe Shed over Brick House; Pipe Shed on Ground Floor; Kiln Shed; Drying Shed over Kilns; Stable (centre of Yard); Yard; Office; Stores; Sidings; Buildings; Land. The entries in the first section give an idea of the treatment: '6 Tables each fitted with sets of tile moulds & dressing table and dressers complete | 6 Step Ladders | 3 Hand Press Brick Machines by (Clayton & Sons) | 3 Brick barrows | 1 Dun & Glazing tub 2.6 x 2.0 x 1.3 | 6 Wheelbarrows'. The VCH History of the County of Somerset: Volume 8 (2004) gives the following details of the firm: 'In 1871 a brickyard [in Downend] employed one brickmaker and four labourers. B. C. D. Greenhill was making pottery and tiles by 1879 and by the 1880s the yard was part of the Dunball Steam Pottery and Brick and Tiles Works, from 1886 owned by the firm of Colthurst Symons. Its early products were tiles, as many as 20,000 produced each week. The works, employing between 70 and 80 people in 1947, were the last of the kind in the area when they closed in 1970.'