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HOFFMAN'S BRICK & POTTERY WORKS (FORMER)

Location 72-106 DAWSON STREET,, BRUNSWICK VIC 3056 - Property No 99528 Level Included in Heritage Overlay

Statement of Significance

The Brunswick Brickworks is of primary historical, technological, aesthetic, and social Significance.

The Hoffman Brickworks are of considerable historical and technological Significance at a national level. The combination of the high output patent Hoffman continuous firing kilns and the patent Craven steam brick presses marked the first full industrialisation of the brick making process in Australia, and may be a relatively early surviving example of brick making industrialisation in the international context.

The site contains Victoria's only remaining 19th Century Hoffman kilns and among the few Hoffman kilns remaining intact and in context with associated plant and production buildings. It is significant to the Brunswick locality as the last remaining substantial evidence of the industry most central to the history of the area's development and which made the district the largest clay industry centre in the state.

The kilns have some aesthetic Significance in their spectacular and unusual external form and their striking presence in the industrial landscape. The visibility of the kiln group from Dawson Street and the surrounding area is of fundamental importance to the appreciation of the brickworks' dominant economic and social presence in the local community. The annular brick vaults of the kiln interiors have a unique formal beauty. To a lesser degree, the interior spaces and structures of the kilns' firing floors and of the brick pressing sheds are also impressive and darkly evocative in their scale and complexity.

Their connection with the 1880s is of particular historical Significance as a tangible connection with the building boom that so dramatically altered the character of Melbourne. This point is amplified by the fact that the Hoffman Brick company was a leader in introducing pioneering brick making technology to Victoria to supply the boom. Their products remain widespread throughout suburbia.

Though now far from complete, the brickworks are significant in their demonstration of brick making processes and techniques of the 1880s and of subsequent periods in which technological change, or lack of change, in the industry occurred.

The remnants of the pottery buildings mark a direct association with another phase of Melbourne's urban development. The pottery manufactured pipes and sanitary fittings installed as a part of a water supply and sewerage program undertaken by the Board of Works. The pottery also produced voluminous amounts of terracotta roofing products, including Marseilles patterned tiles and copious quantities of household crockery.

The site as a whole is no longer sufficiently intact to demonstrate the full working organisation or the complete process of brick and pottery manufacture it once supported. The most important feature of the spatial arrangement of the site is now the grouping of the three kilns and the brick pressing shed, and the clear space between them from which these buildings can be comprehended as a functional group. The cluster of pottery-related buildings to the east is of contributory Significance as a reminder of this former activity on the site (though what is left demonstrates very little of the processes it involved). The oblique laneway cut between the pottery buildings, which indicates the site's former link to the state's railway system, is a spatial arrangement of contributory Significance.

The site's ability to demonstrate early brick production processes is, however, not unique, as the Box Hill brickworks retains intact a more complete chain of production sites including its quarry and blacksmith's shop.

With the closure of the pit and other parts, the site has been effectively reduced to the central brick production area and remnants of the pottery production area. The buildings and plant of primary individual Significance are the three Hoffman kilns, the machinery associated with the brick pressing plant and the structure housing it. The brick pressing plant and shed demonstrate the processes originally used to supply the kilns, as well as the lack of technical innovation over the ensuing century. Remnants of the plant's steam power system are of contributory Significance. None of the machinery is in itself rare though this would appear to be the largest collection still assembled in its original context .

Most other structures on the site are now of diminished or no Significance, with only a few making any substantial contribution to the site's overall Significance.

[ExtractAllom Lovell & Associates. Former Brunswick BrickworksConservation Management Plan. November 1997]

Group

Manufacturing and Processing

Category

Kiln Brick/ brickworks