Prestongrange Museum

A brick spotting trip to the coast at Prestongrange, East Lothian, would not be complete without a visit to Prestongrange Industrial Heritage Museum, where once upon a time, many of the PRESTON GRANGE bricks, along with other variations on the brickmark, were originally moulded, dried and finally fired in the kilns.

Many of the original buildings and associated infrastructure from the Prestongrange Brick & Fire Clay Works, together with Prestongrange Colliery, is now gone, demolished and removed, some tipped locally in the surrounding area, possibly as infill to the harbour of Morrison’s Haven and most certainly along the shore of the Firth of Forth only 200m away. Perhaps one day archaeologists will excavate here and reveal these buried treasures.

One might expect to find lots of Prestonegrange-made bricks here but that is not the case, though I did spot an incomplete P/GRANGE to add to the virtual collection, along with an NCB P-GRANGE. Most of the visible bricks in walls here are stamped SBC, the Scottish Brick Corporation with a few others lying around including, NEWBATTLE, GISCOL and NIDDRIE.

Of course, it’s always pleasing to find something interesting, as in the example above. Though incomplete, the brickmark would have read, MITCHELL WEST BANK PORTOBELLO.

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