A clay pit is a quarry or mine for the extraction of clay, which is generally used for manufacturing pottery, bricks or Portland cement.
The brickyard or brickworks is often located alongside the clay pit to reduce the transport costs of the raw material. These days pottery producers are often not sited near the source of their clay and usually do not own the clay deposits. The other essential raw material is fuel for firing and potteries may be located near to fuel deposits rather than the clay.
Former claypits are sometimes filled with water and used for recreational purposes such as sailing and scuba diving. The Eden Project at Bodelva near St Austell, Cornwall, UK is a major redevelopment of a former china clay pit for educational and environmental purposes.
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Famous quotes containing the words clay and/or pit:
“Water. Its sunny track in the plain; its splashing in the garden canal, the sound it makes when in its course it meets the mane of the grass; the diluted reflection of the sky together with the fleeting sight of the reeds; the Negresses fill their dripping gourds and their red clay containers; the song of the washerwomen; the gorged fields the tall crops ripening.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“There are those who would keep us slipping back into the darkness of division, into the snake pit of racial hatred, of racial antagonism and of support for symbols of the struggle to keep African-Americans in bondage.”
—Carol Moseley-Braun (b. 1947)